Interaction between polymer-grafted nanoparticles in chemically identical homopolymer matrix

Abstract

In this research, we develop a new numerical scheme of self-consistent field theory (SCFT) to quantify interparticle interaction between two spherical nanoparticles (NPs) coated with polymer grafts in chemically identical homopolymer melts. In our numerical SCFT calculation, twodimensional finite volume method (FVM) which efficiently conserves the amount of material in curvilinear coordinate is adopted, and the differential equation for partition function is solved in real space with Multicoordinate-system (MCS) scheme which makes use of the mirror symmetry between the two particles. In this research, we investigate how distribution of chain lengths, grafting density and particle curvature interplay roles on stabilization mechanism for dispersion by calculating interaction potentials between two polymer-coated NPs as functions of distance between the two particles. Our results reveal that polydisperse distribution stabilizes dispersions more efficiently than monodisperse counterparts.