Herein a facile and controllable heterocoagulation between polystyrene(PS) microspheres and multiwalled carbon nanotubes(MWCNTs) is introduced based on colloid thermodynamics. The MWCNTs play the role of steric stabilizer for stabilizing the metastable PS microspheres and thus immobilize spontaneously on the surface of PS microspheres. The synthesized MWCNTs-coated PS composite particles have been extensively characterized by scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, thermogravimetry and Raman spectroscopy. The results indicate that the structure and morphology of the resultant MWCNTs-coated PS composite particles are significantly affected by the weight ratio of PS and MWNCTs and the amount of poly(vinylpyrrolidone) that is injected into PS dispersion before they are mixed with MWCNTs. Therefore, these composite particles have the potential to produce MWCNTs-based composite materials with controllable mass loading and dispersity of MWCNTs.
Structural properties of polymers confined in nanocylinders are investigated by Monte Carlo simulation, which is successfully used to consider the conformational property of constrained polymers. The conformational properties of the polymers close to the walls exhibit different features. The density profiles of polymers are enhanced near the wall of the nanocylinder, which shows that the packing densities differ near the wall and far from the wall. The highest densities near the wall of the nanocylinder decrease with increasing radius of the nanocylinder. Furthermore, the density excess is not only near the wall of the nanocylinder, but also shifts to the center of the nanocylinder at lower temperatures. The radius of gyration and the bond length of polymers in the nanocylinder show that the polymer chains tend to extend along the axis of the nanocylinder in highly confined nanocylinder and contract at lower temperature. Our results are very helpful in understanding the packing induced physical behaviors of polymers in nanocylinders, such as glass transition, crystallization,etc.
The crowding agent induced phase transition of amphiphilic block copolymers in solution was explicitly considered. The influence of the size and the volume fraction of the crowding agent on the phase separation of amphiphilic diblock copolymers is investigated by using self-consistent field theory(SCFT) method. The concentration of the disorder to order transition of the block copolymer decreases when the size of the crowding agent is larger than that of the solvent. The higher volume fraction of the crowding agent will induce the transition of the block copolymer from disorder to order state at a lower concentration. The relation between the size and the volume fraction of the crowding agent is elucidated. When the size of the crowding agent is larger, its volume fraction of the disorder to order transition of the block copolymer will be lower. The conformation of the crowding agent considered as a polymer chain is also studied and compared.
