Morphology Modulation of Multicomponent Polymer Brushes in Selective Solvent by Patterned Surfaces

Abstract

The response of adaptive multicomponent polymer brushes to chemically patterned top surfaces as a function of the solvent quality and grafting density of the brushes and for applied patterns is studied by molecular dynamics simulations of a coarse-grained implicit-solvent model with soft, nonbonded interactions. The model is developed in order to address experimentally relevant, large invariant degrees of polymerization, and nonbonded interactions are expressed via a third-order (virial) expansion of the equation of state. The choice of interaction parameters mimics PAA-b-PS diblock copolymer brushes and PAA/PS mixed brushes. The role of the geometry and scale of the surface pattern is explored and related to the response of the spontaneously assembled morphologies of the unconfined brushes.