2005/11/24 by I. O. Götze, I. O. Gotze, A. J. Archer +1 · 2 citations
Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Block Copolymer Self-Assembly #Dendrimers and Hyperbranched Polymers #Liquid Crystal Research Advancements #cond-mat.soft #cond-mat.stat-mech
paper · pdf · doi:10.1063/1.2172596
published as J. Chem. Phys. 124 084901 (2006) · 8 pages, 10 figures
arxiv created 2005/11/24 · openalex publication_date 2006/02/17 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The effective pair potentials between different kinds of dendrimers in solution can be well approximated by appropriate Gaussian functions. We find that in binary dendrimer mixtures the range and strength of the effective interactions depend strongly upon the specific dendrimer architecture. We consider two different types of dendrimer mixtures, employing the Gaussian effective pair potentials, to determine the bulk fluid structure and phase behavior. Using a simple mean field density functional theory (DFT) we find good agreement between theory and simulation results for the bulk fluid structure. Depending on the mixture, we find bulk fluid-fluid phase separation (macrophase separation) or microphase separation, i.e., a transition to a state characterized by undamped periodic concentration fluctuations. We also determine the inhomogeneous fluid structure for confinement in spherical cavities. Again, we find good agreement between the DFT and simulation results. For the dendrimer mixture exhibiting microphase separation, we observe a rather striking pattern formation under confinement.