Preprint Article Version 1 Preserved in Portico This version is not peer-reviewed

Adsorption of Polymer-Grafted Nanoparticles on Curved Surfaces

Version 1 : Received: 18 February 2021 / Approved: 23 February 2021 / Online: 23 February 2021 (09:35:14 CET)

A peer-reviewed article of this Preprint also exists.

Ozmaian, A.; Coalson, R.D.; Ozmaian, M. Adsorption of Polymer-Grafted Nanoparticles on Curved Surfaces. Chemistry 2021, 3, 382-390. Ozmaian, A.; Coalson, R.D.; Ozmaian, M. Adsorption of Polymer-Grafted Nanoparticles on Curved Surfaces. Chemistry 2021, 3, 382-390.

Abstract

Nanometer-curved surfaces are abundant in biological systems as well as in nano-sized technologies. Properly functionalized polymer-grafted nanoparticles (PGNs) adhere to surfaces with different geometries and curvatures. This work explores some of the energetic and mechanical characteristics of the adhesion of PGNs to surfaces with positive, negative and zero curvatures using Coarse-Grained Molecular Dynamics (CGMD) simulations. Our calculated free energies of binding of the PGN to the curved and flat surfaces as a function of separation distance show that curvature of the surfaces critically impacts the adhesion strength. We find that the flat surface is the most adhesive, and the concave surface is the least adhesive surface. This somewhat counterintuitive finding suggests that while a bare nanoparticle is more likely to adhere to a positively curved surface than a flat surface, grafting polymer chains to the nanoparticle surface inverts this behavior. Moreover, we studied the rheological behavior of PGN upon separation from the flat and curved surfaces under external pulling force. The results presented herein can be exploited in drug delivery and self-assembly applications.

Keywords

adhesion; self-assembly; drug delivery; curved surface; template-assisted self-assembly; nanotechnology; single-molecule system; polymer nanocomposite.

Subject

Chemistry and Materials Science, Physical Chemistry

Comments (0)

We encourage comments and feedback from a broad range of readers. See criteria for comments and our Diversity statement.

Leave a public comment
Send a private comment to the author(s)
* All users must log in before leaving a comment
Views 0
Downloads 0
Comments 0
Metrics 0


×
Alerts
Notify me about updates to this article or when a peer-reviewed version is published.
We use cookies on our website to ensure you get the best experience.
Read more about our cookies here.