Spherical polymeric brushes viewed as soft colloidal particles zero-shear viscosity.pdfVIP

Physica B 296 (2001 )184} 189 Spherical polymeric brushes viewed as soft colloidal particles: zero-shear viscosity Dimitris Vlassopoulos *, George Fytas , Stergios Pispas , Nikos Hadjichristidis Foundation for Research and Technology } Hellas (FO.R.T.H.), Institute of Electronic Structure Laser, Heraklion 71110, Crete, Greece Department of Chemistry, University of Athens, 15771 Zografou, Athens, Greece Abstract We examine the concentration dependence of the zero-shear viscosity of two chemically distinct classes of spherical brushes, multiarm star polymers and giant diblock copolymer micelles. We show that the e!ective volume fraction based on the hydrodynamic, rather than the static, size of these objects is the appropriate scaling parameter for obtaining a generic description of the relative viscosity for systems of varying size and softness. We demonstrate that it is possible to span the whole range from polymeric behavior to that of hard colloidal spheres by tuning the sphere softness at the molecular level (arm size and functionality). 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Micelles; Star polymers; Colloids; Viscosity 1. Introduction exhibit structural and dynamic properties with fea- tures attributed to both polymeric and colloidal In recent years the need to bridge the gap be- character. It is thus evident that the use of model tween polymers and colloids has emerged as an systems will play a crucial role in understan