title: Mechanical properties of designed multicompartment gels formed by ABC graft copolymers.
abstract: In the present work, we designed a multicompartment gel by taking advantage of the ABC graft copolymer with a solvophilic A backbone and solvophobic B and C grafts. The mechanical properties of such designed gels were investigated by a combination of dissipative particle dynamics simulation and a nonequilibrium deformation technique. The extensional moduli of multicompartment gels were found to be dependent on polymer concentration and architectural parameters of the graft copolymers (the sequence of graft arms and the position of the graft points). The graft copolymer solutions undergo a sol-gel transition as the polymer concentration increases. This leads to an abrupt increase in the extensional modulus. The studies also revealed that the multicompartment gels of graft copolymers exhibit higher extensional moduli than those of nonmulticompartment gels of graft copolymers and triblock copolymer gels. The position of graft points plays another important role in determining the extensional moduli of the multicompartment gels. The effects of graft positions on the gel modulus were found to be associated with the bridging fraction of graft copolymer chains. The results gained through the present work may provide useful guidance for designing high-performance gels.
authors.affiliation: Shanghai Key Laboratory of Advanced Polymeric Materials, Key Laboratory for Ultrafine Materials of Ministry of Education, State Key Laboratory of Bioreactor Engineering, School of Materials Science and Engineering, East China University of Science and Technology , Shanghai 200237, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Tao
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Jiang
authors.forename: Liquan
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Jiaping
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Lin
mesh_terms: D005782:Gels / Q000138:chemical synthesis* / Q000737:chemistry; D008958:Models, Molecular; D011108:Polymers / Q000737:chemistry*
chemical_list: D005782:Gels; D011108:Polymers