Posted by iacovecr on Monday, October 31, 2011 in Recent Publications.

Citation:

Iacovella CR, Horsch MA, Zhang ZL, Glotzer SC, (2005) Phase diagrams of self-assembled mono-tethered nanospheres from molecular simulation and comparison to surfactants, Langmuir, 21, pp 9498–9494

DOI:10.1021/la051035l

Abstract:

We perform Brownian dynamics simulations on model 3-D systems of mono-tethered nanospheres (TNS) to study the equilibrium morphologies formed by their self-assembly in a selective solvent. We predict that in contrast to flexible amphiphiles the nanospheres are locally ordered and there is an increase in the local order with an increase in concentration or relative nanoparticle diameter. We present the temperature vs concentration phase diagram for a system of TNS and propose a dimensionless scaling factor F_v (headgroup volume/tether volume) that allows a comparison between the morphologies formed from TNS and traditional surfactants.

Tags: Amphiphile, Phase Separation, Self-assembly, Tethered Nanoparticle