Excess free energy of nanoparticles in a polymer brush

Opposing effects of cationic antimicrobial peptides and divalent cations on bacterial lipopolysaccharides

“…Nanoparticle inclusion in a polymer brush has recently been studied numerically and theoretically [59,60]. In particular, the inclusion free energy or the excess free energy due to single inclusion F brush was obtained for a spherical particle.…”

Nanoinclusions in polymer brushes with explicit solvent – A molecular dynamics investigation

“…Suitable spatial organization of nanoparticles of various kinds (metallic, semiconducting, insulating nanoparticles) in appropriate polymeric matrices is considered as a highly promising route to develop novel materials with tunable properties, depending on the chemical nature, the size, the volume fraction, and the precise geometric arrangement of these nanoparticles [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19]21,22]. A special case of great current interest are nanoparticles embedded in ultrathin films of flexible polymers end-grafted on solid surfaces {see e.g.…”

“…A special case of great current interest are nanoparticles embedded in ultrathin films of flexible polymers end-grafted on solid surfaces {see e.g. [8,9,18,[20][21][22]}. Already in the absence of nanoparticles the height h and average monomer volume fraction / p of such ''polymer brushes" [23][24][25][26][27][28] can be controlled to a wide extent by varying the chain length N of the macromolecules, the grafting density r g , and the solvent quality.…”

“…Here we are interested in the case where nanoparticles are inserted at nonzero average volume fraction / nano in the brush, 0and then the problem can no longer be reduced to the insertion of single nanoparticles [21,22], that do not interact with each other. Kim and O'Shaughnessy [9,18] predicted, based on their approximate extension of the SSL theory, that the brush height increases as…”

Brush in the bath of active particles: Anomalous stretching of chains and distribution of particles

“…6,[23][24][25][26][27][28] Theoretical and simulation studies have shown that the solubility, the size and the shape of particles greatly influence their spatial organization on the brush. [29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42] For example, for soluble spherical nanoparticles, there is an upper threshold size beyond which particles cannot penetrate into the brush and a lower threshold size below which particles can completely penetrate into the brush; and for the size in between particles can partly penetrate into the brush with a thickness proportional to the brush height and inversely proportional to the particle volume. 40,43 Recently, there is an increasing interest in the behaviors of a chain immersed in a bath of active particles.…”