Dresden 2014 – scientific programme
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CPP: Fachverband Chemische Physik und Polymerphysik
CPP 44: Charged Soft Matter I
CPP 44.1: Talk
Thursday, April 3, 2014, 09:30–09:45, ZEU 118
Absorption of a charged polymer star by an oppositely charged polyelectrolyte brush — •Majid Farzin1,2, Torsten Kreer1, and Jens-Uwe Sommer1,2 — 1Leibniz institute for polymer research dresden — 2Technical University of Dresden
By means of molecular dynamics simulations, we investigate the interactions between a polyelectrolyte brush and an oppositely charged polymer star. We explicitly include counterions and vary the strength of Coulomb interactions in two fashions; by varying the Bjerrum length of fully charged polymers and by changing the charge fraction of grafted chains for the Bjerrum length close to that of water. The simulations show that there is a critical Bjerrum length below which the polymer star is located outside the brush. For larger values of the Bjerrum length, the polymer star is absorbed by the brush. In the case of charge fraction variation, the polymer star is absorbed by the brush at all charge fractions. Also, we observe that, in the vicinity of the critical Bjerrum length or for small charge fractions, the shape of the polymer star is pancake-like.