Adsorption of random copolymers onto heterogeneous nanostructures

Previous studies on polymer adsorption onto flat surfaces showed that the monomer density profile in the adsorbed layers is dependent upon the attraction strength between the wall and the polymers, polymer bulk concentration and solvent selectivity. For a solution of polymers with regularly distributed sticky monomers near a flat surface it was predicted that the morphologies of the adsorbed layers result from the competition between the average nearest distance between the sticky sites on the polymer chain and that between the substrate sticky sites. In this talk we analyze the adsorption of random copolymers with hydrophobic and hydrophilic groups onto nanoparticles with a heterogeneous surface. We show that the optimal composition of the random copolymers to encapsulate the nanoparticles is determined by the interplay between adsorption energy, polymer composition and solvent selectivity. There is a strong correlation between the sequences of the adsorbed polymer chains, indicating that the surface is able to pick certain subsets out of the randomly shuffled sequences. Our study shows that copolymers with similar compositions encapsulate numerous types of surface patterns fairly effectively.