Self-assembly of Bottlebrush Amphiphilic Polymers Near/On Surfaces: Coarse-grained Molecular Dynamics Simulation Study

Nanostructured materials for a wide range of applications such as electronics, optics, and sensing are engineered by the self-assembly of block polymers on surfaces. Significant number of past experimental, theoretical, and computational studies have tackled the self-assembly of linear block polymers, both in bulk and on/near surfaces. Relatively fewer studies have been focused on self-assembly of non-linear architectures (e.g., bottlebrush, star, comb) near/on surfaces. In this talk, we will present our recent work using coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations to elucidate how branched polymer architecture affects the assembly in solutions of amphiphilic block copolymers near/on surfaces. We establish the role of side chain length versus backbone length, side chain grafting density on the backbone of amphiphilic block polymers as well as surface attraction strength on the chain conformations and the shapes, sizes and patterns of domains assembled on attractive surfaces.