(366o) Quantifying the Polyelectrolyte Valency of Engineered Nanoparticles

The degree of accommodation of polyelectrolyte attachment (valency) on gold nanoparticles of different sizes have been revealed using a dissipative particle dynamics (DPD) model benchmarked against experiments and atomistic simulations. The polymer model recovers the radius of gyration of polyelectrolyte. We found that nanoparticles of different sizes can accommodate a varying number of polyelectrolyte chains. The maximum such number for a given size nanoparticle is the latter’s valency. We found that valency is proportional to the surface area of the nanoparticle and the charge density on the surface, which are in turn available to design for valency with control. We also built and characterized nanoparticle dimer structures connected by polyelectrolytes of varying size. We found the existence of a critical polyelectrolyte length required to keep the nanoparticles from collapse. It is related to the observed valency of the single nanoparticles. We also show that the control of polymeric assembly through the use of preordained valency offers a route to the design of engineered nanoparticle networks for autonomous computing materials.