Eur. Phys. J. E (2006) 20: 99-108
https://doi.org/10.1140/epje/i2005-10122-7

Regular Article

Spontaneous bending of 2D molecular bottle-brush

¹ Institute of Petrochemical Synthesis, Russian Academy of Sciences, 119991, Moscow, Russia
² Laboratory of Polymer Chemistry and Materials Science Centre, University of Groningen, Nijenborgh 4, 9747 AG, Groningen, The Netherlands

^* e-mail: subbotin@ips.ac.ru
^** e-mail: g.ten.brinke@rug.nl

Received: 15 December 2005
Accepted: 12 April 2006
Published online: 15 May 2006

Abstract

Using a scaling approach we consider a 2D comb copolymer brush under bending deformations. We show that the rectilinear brush is locally stable and can be characterized by a persistence length λ increasing with the molecular weight of grafting side chains as λ ∼ M ³. A bending instability due to redistribution of the side chains appears in the non-linear regime where bending is strong. Arguments are presented that the brush conformations consist of alternating rectilinear and bent sections corresponding to the different free-energy minima.