title: Binary mixed homopolymer brushes grafted on nanorod particles: a self-consistent field theory study.
abstract: We employ the self-consistent field theory to study phase structures of brush-rod systems composed of two chemically distinct linear homopolymers. The polymer chains are uniformly grafted on the surface of a nanorod particle of finite length and comparable radius to the polymer radius of gyration. A "masking" technique treating the cylindrical boundary is introduced to solve the modified diffusion equations with an efficient and high-order accurate pseudospectral method involving fast Fourier transform on an orthorhombic cell. A rich variety of structures for the phase separated brushes is predicted. Phase diagrams involving a series of system parameters, such as the aspect ratio of the nanorod, the grafting density, and the chain length are constructed. The results indicate that the phase structure of the mixed brush-rod system can be tailored by varying the grafted chain length and/or the aspect ratio of the rod to benefit the fabrication of polymeric nanocomposites.
authors: Department of Macromolecular Science, The State Key Laboratory of Molecular Engineering of Polymers, Key Laboratory of Computational Physical Sciences, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China.
authors: Xin
authors: X
authors: Ma
authors: Yingzi
authors: Y
authors: Yang
authors: Lei
authors: L
authors: Zhu
authors: Bin
authors: B
authors: Zhao
authors: Ping
authors: P
authors: Tang
authors: Feng
authors: F
authors: Qiu