Despite the continued growth of their industrial and scientific importance, anticipating the equilibrium structure and properties of polymer nanocomposites remains a significant challenge. Understanding the dispersion of nanoparticles in inhomogeneous polymer matrices, such as block copolymers and phase-separated blends, is critical because many of the enhanced properties depend on the dispersion state of the particles. In this talk, I will present our recent developments of a field-theoretic modeling approach for predicting the equilibrium distribution of various classes of nanoparticles in polymer matrices. Our approach is a simple extension of polymer field theory that enables the inclusion of nanoparticles as fields while capturing the correlations in the nanoparticle positions. Importantly, this approach can be extended to systems containing anisotropic nanoparticles (nanorods), homogeneous and Janus-grafted nanoparticles, and the effect of field fluctuations can be easily incorporated into the calculations. Results will be presented showing the distribution of grafted nanoparticles in thin films and blends, and I will discuss some recent work where defects in a phase-separated block copolymer are exploited to control the distribution of nanoparticles.

Field theoretic simulations of inhomogeneous polymer nanocomposites

248th National Meeting (2014)

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