Spontaneous bending of 2D molecular bottle-brush.
Using a scaling approach we consider a 2D comb copolymer brush under bending deformations. We show that the rectilinear brush is locally stable and can be characterized by a persistence length lambda increasing with the molecular weight of grafting side chains as lambda approximately M3. A bending instability due to redistribution of the side chains appears in the non-linear regime where bending is strong. Arguments are presented that the brush conformations consist of alternating rectilinear and bent sections corresponding to the different free-energy minima.
Subbotin
A
A
Institute of Petrochemical Synthesis, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow 119991, Russia. subbotin@ips.ac.ru
de Jong
J
J
ten Brinke
G
G
D003198:Computer Simulation; D008433:Mathematics; D008956:Models, Chemical; D008958:Models, Molecular; D044367:Phase Transition; D011108:Polymers / Q000737:chemistry*; D013816:Thermodynamics
D011108:Polymers