Nanoparticle Motion in Entangled Melts of Linear and Nonconcatenated Ring Polymers

作者：Ge Ting; Kalathi Jagannathan T; Halverson Jonathan D; Grest Gary S; Rubinstein Michael

来源：Macromolecules, 2017, 50(4): 1749-1754.

DOI：10.1021/acs.macromol.6b02632

The motion of nanoparticles (NPs) in entangled melts of linear polymers and nonconcatenated ring polymers are compared by large-scale molecular dynamics simulations. The comparison provides a paradigm for the effects of polymer architecture on the dynamical coupling between NPs and polymers in nanocomposites. Strongly suppressed motion of NPs with diameter d larger than the entanglement spacing a is observed in a melt of linear polymers before the Onset of Fickian NP diffusion. This strong suppression of NP motion occurs progressively as d exceeds a and is related to the hopping diffusion of NPs in the entanglement network. In contrast to the NP motion in linear polymers, the motion of NPs with d > a in ring polymers is not as strongly suppressed prior to Fickian diffusion. The diffusion coefficient D decreases with increasing d much slower in entangled rings than in entangled linear chains. NP motion in entangled nonconcatenated ring polymers is understood through a scaling analysis of the coupling between NP motion and the self-similar entangled dynamics of ring polymers.

• 出版日期2017-2-28