Self-assembly Behavior Of T-shaped Amphiphilic Polymers In Selective Solutions

The famous French physicist Pierre-Gilles de Gennes gave a speech on the topic of soft matter at the Nobel Prize-winning conference and put forward the concept of soft matter for the first time.Soft matter self-organization has always been a core concern in the fields of supramolecular chemistry and material synthesis.These nanostructured structures expand the application prospects of polymer materials in nano-dot or nanowire arrays,inorganic mesoporous molecular sieves,and photonic crystals.In our study,the dissipative particle dynamics simulation method was used to explore the microphase structure and phase diagram of T-shaped amphiphilic molecules in selective solvents with concentrations of 0.15,0.30,0.60 and 0.90.At the same temperature,we changed the length of the hydrophilic and hydrophobic segments of the T-shaped amphiphilic polymer,the concentration of the selective solvent,spherical phase structure,columnar phase structure,perforated lamellar phase structure and lamellar phase structure were obtained.The globular phase is a solid sphere structure with hydrophobic segments surrounded by the hydrophilic segments.The columnar phase is a solid cylindrical phase structure that the hydrophilic segments surrounded by the hydrophobic segments.The perforated lamellar phase is a layered phase structure in which the hydrophilic segment envelops the hydrophobic segment and is penetrated by a selective solvent.The above three phase structures are all obtained in a low concentration of selective solvent.The lamellar phase is a layered phase structure with an interlayer sandwiching hydrophilic segments surrounded by hydrophobic segments,which is obtained in a high concentration of selective solvent.It can be concluded that conformation entropy and chain topology dominate the self assembly of system.Then we constructed phase diagrams of T-shaped amphiphilic polymers at different concentrations.At a concentration of 0.15,the spherical phase in the phase diagram accounts for the majority.At a concentration of 0.30,the columnar phase in the phase diagram accounts for the majority.The proportion of the columnar phase in the image starts to increase.At a concentration of 0.60,a perforated lamellar phase appears in the phase diagram.At a concentration of 0.90,lamellar phase appears in the phase diagram.We also provide brief statistics and analysis of the distribution of various phase structures in phase diagrams.Then we analyzed some physical quantities of various phase structures in equilibrium.Meanwhile,the specific dynamic evolution path from the different initial state and phase structure formation process was analyzed.