Curvature effects upon interactions of polymer-grafted nanoparticles in chemically identical polymer matrices

We study the interactions between polymer-grafted nanoparticles immersed in a chemically identical polymer melt using a numerical implementation of polymer mean-field theory. We focus on the interpenetration width between the grafted and free chains and its relationship to the polymer-mediated interparticle interactions. To this end, we quantify the interpenetration width as a function of particle curvature, grafting density, and the relative molecular weights of the grafted and free chains. We show the onset of wetting and dewetting as a function of these quantities and explain our results through simple scaling arguments to include the effects of curvature. Subsequently, we show that the interparticle potentials correlate quantitatively with the trends displayed by the interpenetration widths. (C) 2010 American Institute of Physics. [doi: 10.1063/1.3493330]