(28c) Phase Behavior of Tethered Nanoparticle Telechelics

Tethered Nanoparticles (TNPs) are a unique class of building blocks with assembly behavior analogous to copolymers and surfactants. In all such polymeric systems, complex network morphologies, such as the gyroid, appear for suitable choices of building block architecture. These morphologies are highly sought after for applications ranging from photonics, where band gaps can be tuned based on the length-scales of the network, to microfluidics, for their potential to subdivide space into non-interacting regions. We discuss the presence of such complex morphologies in TNP Telechelics - two nanoparticles of different chemical specificity joined by a polymer tether - simulated via Langevin Dynamics at varying nanoparticle size ratios, polymer tether lengths, temperatures, and packing fractions. By drawing comparisons to other types of systems, particular focus is placed on how introducing a polymer tether as an assembly strategy affects the types of ordered structures that emerge. We further discuss how TNP systems can be adapted to create structures with symmetries not traditionally observed in polymeric systems.

Research supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Division of Materials Sciences and Engineering under Award #DE-FG02-02ER46000.