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Conformational Properties of Polymer Mushrooms Under Spherical and Cylindrical Confinement
Author(s) -
Wang Rong,
Virnau Peter,
Binder Kurt
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
macromolecular theory and simulations
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.37
H-Index - 56
eISSN - 1521-3919
pISSN - 1022-1344
DOI - 10.1002/mats.200900085
Subject(s) - polymer , materials science , polymer science , chemical physics , polymer chemistry , chemistry , composite material
A coarse grained model of a flexible macromolecule end‐grafted on the inside of a sphere or a cylinder under good solvent conditions is studied by Monte Carlo simulations. For cylindrical confinement, two regimes are found: when the cylinder radius R exceeds the gyration radius R go of the polymer mushroom grafted to a planar surface, a simple scaling description holds. In the opposite case, a non‐monotonic crossover to a cigar‐like quasi‐one‐dimensional structure occurs, and the distribution P e ( x ) of the free chain end in the x ‐direction along the cylinder axis becomes bimodal. Spherical confinement, on the other hand, causes a crossover from dilute to semidilute behavior of the structural properties.