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Phase transitions in polymer brushes
Author(s) -
Birshtein Tatiana M.,
Amoskov Victor M.,
Mercurieva Anna A.,
Pryamitsyn Victor A.
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
macromolecular symposia
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.257
H-Index - 76
eISSN - 1521-3900
pISSN - 1022-1360
DOI - 10.1002/masy.19971130114
Subject(s) - brush , polymer brush , materials science , phase transition , mesogen , polymer , planar , phase (matter) , chemical physics , monolayer , condensed matter physics , polymer chemistry , nanotechnology , liquid crystalline , composite material , chemistry , physics , polymerization , organic chemistry , computer graphics (images) , computer science
Abstract Liquid crystalline ordering in planar polymer brushes is investigated theoretically by numerical calculations within a self‐consistent field approximation. The brushes are formed by macromolecules with mesogenic groups in main chain and immersed in a solvent. Existence of a microphase segregated brush (MSB) regime with a collapsed orientationally ordered intrinsic sublayer and a swollen external sublayer is shown. At small grafting density, the transition from a conventional brush state to the microphase segregated state is a jump‐wise first order phase transition for a finite chain length ( N ). The magnitudes of the jumps in the average characteristics of the brush tend to zero in the limit N → ∞ since this transition occurs only in a vanishingly small part (∝ N −1/2 ) of the brush. High compressibility of MSB brush is demonstrated. The origin of phase transition in planar brushes is discussed.