Telechelic Star Polymers as Self-Assembling Units from the Molecular to the Macroscopic Scale

Autor(en)

Barbara Capone, Ivan Coluzza, Federica LoVerso, Christos Likos, Ronald Blaak

Abstrakt

By means of multiscale molecular simulations, we show that telechelic-star polymers are a simple, robust, and tunable system, which hierarchically self-assembles into soft-patchy particles and mechanically stabilizes selected, open crystalline structures. The self-aggregating patchy behavior can be fully controlled by the number of arms per star and by the fraction of attractive monomeric units at the free ends of the arms. Such self-assembled soft-patchy particles while forming, upon augmenting density, gel-like percolating networks, preserve properties as particle size, number, and arrangement of patches per particle. In particular, we demonstrate that the flexibility inherent in the soft-patchy particles brings forward a novel mechanism that leads to the mechanical stability of diamond and simple cubic crystals over a wide range of densities, and for molecular sizes ranging from about 10 nm up to the micrometer scale.

Organisation(en)

Computergestützte Physik und Physik der Weichen Materie

Externe Organisation(en)

Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz

Journal

Physical Review Letters

Band

109

Anzahl der Seiten

5

ISSN

0031-9007

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.109.238301

Publikationsdatum

2012

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ÖFOS 2012

103002 Akustik

Link zum Portal

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/65b346a7-81ec-42d8-8038-a9b6f742386f