SKM 2023 – scientific programme
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CPP: Fachverband Chemische Physik und Polymerphysik
CPP 12: Modeling and Simulation of Soft Matter II
CPP 12.6: Talk
Monday, March 27, 2023, 16:45–17:00, MER 02
Evaporation-induced confinement assembly of functional terpolymer microparticles — •Elias M. Zirdehi1, Manuel Trömer2, André H. Gröschel2, and Arash Nikoubashman1 — 1Institute of Physics, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz — 2Institute of Physical Chemistry, University of Münster
Evaporation-induced confinement assembly of terpolymers is an effective technique for fabricating internally structured microparticles (MPs). The wide range of usable building blocks allows for a large variety of MPs, but poses also an immense challenge due to the staggering amount of process parameters, which cannot be explored through experiments alone. Therefore, we performed dissipative particle dynamics simulations of a bead-spring model to study the directed assembly of triblock copolymers in evaporating droplets. We developed a semi-grand canonical simulation approach, where droplet particles in the vapor phase are periodically removed to drive evaporation at constant flux. In this model, the evaporation rate is controlled by the frequency and the number of particle removal. The resulting shrinking of the droplet was in excellent agreement with theory and experiments. We then implemented this procedure to investigate how the final morphology of terpolymer MPs is influenced by the evaporation rate as well as surfactant type. Finally, the possibility of altering the morphology tailored for specific applications by adding homopolymers will be discussed.