Ordering of nanoparticles (NPs) at soft polymer surfaces
Bhuwan Poudel (MPI-Polymer Research)

It is crucial to understand how stimuli-responsive polymer surfaces, such as polymer brushes, accommodate nanoparticles and how the presence of nanoparticles alters the structural and dynamical properties of the brushes in order to use the brush/NPs hybrid in optimal applications.
We plan on answering this question by carrying out detailed molecular dynamics simulations. As a first step toward the project's goal, we investigated the properties of brushes and studied how a nanoparticle interacts with them.