Intercolloidal Potentials of Mean Force mediated by Homo- and Diblock Polymer Solutions Elucidated by Field-Theoretic Simulations

ORAL

Abstract

Our work probes how polymers of arbitrary design and chemistry in solution mediate the intercolloidal potential of mean force (PMF). Investigations are conducted using Field-Theoretic simulations, which subsequently yield intercolloidal PMF inputs for coarse-grained, particle based simulations. To realize the potential of polymers in colloidal stabilization and/or colloidal assembly, theory and computation are used synergistically to explore the polymer design space (e.g. molecular weight, volume fraction, architecture, interactions and charges). Here, we develop a general approach using complex Langevin sampling of field-theoretic polymer models between colloidal surfaces to provide exact solutions for colloidal-mediated PMFs for polymers of arbitrary design – explicitly including the effects of fluctuations. We show results for several model homopolymer and diblock polymer cases, illustrating the effects of fluctuations and comparing the explicit simulation results to various simple theoretical models.

*Use of the Shared Experimental Facilities of the Materials Research Science and Engineering Center at UCSB (MRSEC NSF DMR 1720256) is gratefully acknowledged.

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Presenters

  • Nick Sherck

    • Univ of California - Santa Barbara

Authors

  • Nick Sherck

    • Univ of California - Santa Barbara

  • Kris Delaney

    • Univ of California - Santa Barbara
    • UC Santa Barbara
    • Materials Research Laboratory, Univ of California - Santa Barbara
    • Materials Research Laboratory, University of California
    • University of California - Santa Barbara
    • Materials Research Laboratory and Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials, University of California, Santa Barbara

  • M. Scott Shell

    • Univ of California - Santa Barbara
    • Chemical Engineering, University of California Santa Barbara

  • Glenn Fredrickson

    • Univ of California - Santa Barbara
    • UC Santa Barbara
    • Materials Research Laboratory, UC Santa Barbara
    • Chemical Engineering, Univ of California - Santa Barbara
    • Chemical Engineering, Materials, and Materials Research Laboratory, University of California
    • University of California - Santa Barbara
    • Materials Research Laboratory and Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials, University of California, Santa Barbara