Abstract
The self-assembly of Janus ring polymers is studied via a coarse-grained molecular dynamics employing a bead spring model including bending rigidity contributions to the Hamiltonian. We examine the formation and the morphology of amphiphilicity-driven clusters in the system using the number density ρN, the temperature T, the fraction of solvophobic monomers α, and the stiffness of the polymer rings κ as control parameters. We present a quantitative analysis of several characteristics for the formed clusters of Janus rings. Measured quantities include the distribution of the cluster size MC and the shape of the clusters in the form of the prolate/oblate factor Q and shape factors sf. We demonstrate Janus rings form polymorphic micelles that vary from a spherical shape, akin to that known for linear block copolymers, to a novel type of toroidal shape, and we highlight the role played by the key physical parameters leading to the stabilization of such structures.Grapical abstract
Highlights
Amphiphilicity is one of the most interesting physical properties of natural or artificial molecular compounds and colloids, giving rise to an enormous variety of scenarios for selfassembly and emergence of supramolecular aggregation
Surface heterogeneities on colloidal particles can result from the existence of heterogeneously distributed surface charges, which gives rise to the so-called inverse patchy colloids (IPCs) [11]
We have performed simulations on model amphiphilic ring polymers that contain a minority block of monomers that are solvophobic and a majority block that are soluble to a selective solvent
Summary
Amphiphilicity is one of the most interesting physical properties of natural or artificial molecular compounds and colloids, giving rise to an enormous variety of scenarios for selfassembly and emergence of supramolecular aggregation. A prominent example of such amphiphilic particles are chemically heterogeneous, nanosized colloids that have emerged in the last two decades as novel building blocks for steering the self-assembly, structure, dynamics, and macroscopic phase behavior in condensed matter and soft materials, known as patchy colloids [4, 5, 23, 43, 59, 64]. These nano- to micron-sized colloidal particles possess chemically or physically decorated surfaces with selective interactions against the patched and non-patched sectors of the surfaces of other colloids. The interplay between attraction and repulsion of oppositely and like charged regions results into a complex effective potential between IPCs [7] and associated, highly nontrivial self-assembly scenarios [9, 10]
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