Polymer Grafted Nanocomposites for Water Decontamination

Unsynchronous conformational transitions induced by the asymmetric adsorption-response of an active diblock copolymer in an inert brush

“…Meanwhile, U barrier becomes larger when N B increases. All the above results are in agreement with the theoretical prediction shown in eqn (11). It also shows that the transition barrier can be low, about U barrier C 1.5k B T, when N B = 110 is not much longer than the brush length.…”

“…By doing so we can estimate the critical adsorption ratio as a c C 0.37 for N B = 110, and a c C 0.40 for N B = 120. According to eqn (11), U barrier obtained for a o a c should be proportional to ae*, and this is confirmed by the scaling plot of U barrier in the right panel of Fig. 6b, where data points fall into almost a straight line.…”

“…2 These stimuli induced transitions have been exploited to produce responsive functional materials. [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11] Due to the global correlation between all the constituents, phase transitions occurring in complex many-body systems are generally quite gentle and slow. [12][13][14] On the other hand, phase transitions on the molecular level are demonstrated to be very sensitive and fast, as only local conformation changes are involved during the transition process.…”