Free energy of alternating two-component polymer brushes on cylindrical templates.
We use computer simulations to investigate the stability of a two-component polymer brush de-mixing on a curved template into phases of different morphological properties. It has been previously shown via molecular dynamics simulations that immiscible chains having different length and anchored to a cylindrical template will phase separate into stripes of different widths oriented perpendicularly to the cylindrical axis. We calculate free energy differences for a variety of stripe widths, and extract simple relationships between the sizes of the two polymers, N(1) and N(2), and the free energy dependence on the stripe width. We explain these relationships using simple physical arguments based upon previous theoretical work on the free energy of polymer brushes.
Department of Chemistry, Columbia University, New York, New York 10027, USA.
William L
WL
Miller
Behnaz
B
Bozorgui
Katherine
K
Klymko
Angelo
A
Cacciuto