The self-assembly behavior of polymer brushes induced by the orientational ordering of rod backbones: a dissipative particle dynamics study

Dissipative particle dynamics (DPD) simulations were used to study the self-assembly behavior of polymer brushes with rod-coil backbones, polycaprolactone-b-poly(2-(dimethylamino)ethyl methacrylate)-grafted cellulose nanocrystals (CNC-g-PCL-b-PDMAEMA), and to further examine the influences of polymer concentration, rod-block proportion and distribution of backbones and the grafting density of side chains on the resulting aggregate conformations....