Dresden 2020 – scientific programme

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DY: Fachverband Dynamik und Statistische Physik

DY 35: Modelling and Simulation of Soft Matter I (joint session CPP/DY)

DY 35.8: Talk

Wednesday, March 18, 2020, 11:45–12:00, ZEU 255

Role of preferential adsorption in cononsolvency — •Swaminath Bharadwaj and Nico van der Vegt — Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany

Cononsolvency is the phenomenon in which a polymer chain collapses in a mixture of good solvents. The solvation forces and interactions that drive this phenomenon however remain poorly understood. An important question which arises is whether the cononsolvency mechanism is generic. In this regard, studies have proposed simple and universal mechanisms depending on preferential cosolvent adsorption [1] and solvent-cosolvent clustering [2].

We demonstrate through computer simulations that cononsolvency is not a generic phenomenon driven by a universal interaction. We show that cononsolvency can occur with and without the preferential adsorption of the cosolvent and discuss the related experimental results [3]. We also discuss preliminary results on the role of attractive polymer-solvent/cosolvent interactions in cononsolvency. Our results highlight the need to understand the role of microscopic interactions in polymer solubility. The aforementioned generic models [1,2], though not universal, can still be employed on a case-by-case basis depending on the dominant underlying interactions.

[1]Mukherji, D., Marques, C. M. & Kremer, K. Nat. Commun. 5,4882 (2014).

[2]Zhang, G. & Wu, C. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 123, 1376 (2001)

[3]Bharadwaj, S. & van der Vegt, N. F. A. Macromolecules 52, 4131 (2019)