Combined Mesoscale/Experimental Study of Selective Placement of Magnetic Nanoparticles in Diblock Copolymer Films via Solvent Vapor Annealing

Abstract

We present a combined theoretical/experimental study to investigate the effect of selective solvent vapor annealing treatment on the obtainment of highly ordered morphologies of symmetric poly(styrene-b-methyl methacrylate) diblock copolymer (PS-b-PMMA DBC) films loaded with compatibilized magnetic (Fe3O4) nanoparticles (NPs). Different amounts of NPs were considered (1, 2, and 5 wt %) to study the effect of the inorganic content on the final properties of Fe3O4/PS-b-PMMA films. A precise control of the DBC nanostructure could be obtained by very simple and cost-effective fabrication steps, compatible with current industrial processes. Moreover, the modified NPs could be selectively placed into the PMMA domains of the DBC up to NP concentration of 5 wt % while preserving the corresponding DBC lamellar morphology

Structural characterization and functional correlation of Fe3O4 nanocrystals obtained using 2-ethyl-1,3-hexanediol as innovative reactive solvent in non-hydrolytic sol-gel synthesis

“…For this reason, considerable research attention has been placed to the preparation of magnetite (Fe 3 O 4 ) nanoparticles, due to their potential applications, ranging from biomedicine (biosensing, magnetic imaging, drug delivery and magnetic hyperthermia) [12] to environmental (sensitive detection of specific analytes, water treatment with high gradient magnetic separation and bioremediation) [13] and data storage technologies (electromagnetic memory devices) [14,15]. Methods to synthetize magnetic nanoparticles with useful functional properties have been extensively reviewed in the last few years [16][17][18].…”

Phase Behavior of Gradient Copolymer Melts with Different Gradient Strengths Revealed by Mesoscale Simulations

“…Dissipative particle dynamics (DPD) is a well-established mesoscale simulation method that has been used several times for modelling polymers in melts [32,33], solutions or near surfaces [34,35], as well as the self-assembly of copolymers [36][37][38], nanocomposites [39,40] and out of equilibrium nanosystems [41]. Therefore, we refer the reader to reference [42] for full details on DPD and provide here only details relevant to our study.…”

Tuning the Properties of Nanogel Surfaces by Grafting Charged Alkylamine Brushes

“…Dissipative particle dynamics (DPD) is a well-established CG method that has been successfully used for modeling of complex systems such as polymer brushes, the assembly of copolymers in bulk and in confinement, and the self-assembly of polymer/nanoparticle composites or systems under non-equilibrium conditions, just to mention a few [28,29,30,31,32,33]. Therefore, for details about the method we kindly refer the reader to [34] or [35].…”