Eur. Phys. J. E (2011) 34: 52
https://doi.org/10.1140/epje/i2011-11052-5

Analysis of the cluster formation in two-component cylindrical bottle-brush polymers under poor solvent conditions. A simulation study

¹ Institut für Physik, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität, D-55099, Mainz, Germany
² Faculty of Physics, University of Vienna, A-1090, Vienna, Austria
³ Institute for Theoretical Physics and Center for Computational Materials Science (CMS), Technical University of Vienna, A-1040, Vienna, Austria
⁴ Vienna Computational Materials’ Laboratory, A-1090, Vienna, Austria
⁵ Institut für Physik, Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, von Seckendorff-Platz 1, 06120, Halle, Germany

^* e-mail: panagiotis.theodorakis@univie.ac.at

Received: 22 February 2011
Accepted: 9 May 2011
Published online: 25 May 2011

Abstract

Two-component bottle-brush polymers, where flexible side chains containing N = 20, 35 and 50 effective monomers are grafted alternatingly to a rigid backbone, are studied by Molecular Dynamics simulations, varying the grafting density and the solvent quality. Whereas for poor solvents and large enough the molecular brush is a cylindrical object with monomers of different type occupying locally the two different halves of the cylinder, for intermediate values of an axially inhomogeneous structure of “pearl-necklace” type is formed, where microphase separation between monomers of different type within a cluster takes place. These “pearls” have a strongly non-spherical ellipsoidal shape, due to the fact that several side chains cluster together in one “pearl”. We discuss the resulting structures in detail and we present a comparison with the single-component bottle-brush case.