Sommaire:

Understanding the motion of nanoparticles in polymer solutions and melts is a problem of broad importance, with applications to many different fields, such as material science, biophysics, and medicine. If the nanoparticles are larger than the polymer's radius of gyration, their structure and dynamics can be well described in terms of effective pair potentials. However, much remains to be understood in the so-called “protein limit”, where the size of the nanoparticles becomes comparable to or smaller than that of the polymers. Moreover, most of the previous study considering this size range have only focused on the dilute nanoparticle regime, which is easier to handle since inter-nanoparticle interaction can be neglected and the properties of the polymer solution/melt are expected to be unchanged.

Using molecular dynamics simulations, we study the dynamic and structural properties of a semidilute polymer solution containing well dispersed spherical nanoparticles of size smaller than the polymer's radius of gyration. We consider various nanoparticle diameters and a broad range of nanoparticle volume fractions, up to values for which the inter-nanoparticle interaction becomes important.

Pour plus d'informations, merci de contacter Sorichetti V.