The International Union of Pure and Applied Physics
Abstract
In this research, we develop a new numerical scheme of self-consistent field theory (SCFT) to
quantify interparticle interaction between two spherical nanoparticles (NPs) coated with polymer
grafts in chemically identical homopolymer melts. In our numerical SCFT calculation, twodimensional finite volume method (FVM) which efficiently conserves the amount of material in
curvilinear coordinate is adopted, and the differential equation for partition function is solved in
real space with Multicoordinate-system (MCS) scheme which makes use of the mirror symmetry
between the two particles. In this research, we investigate how distribution of chain lengths,
grafting density and particle curvature interplay roles on stabilization mechanism for dispersion
by calculating interaction potentials between two polymer-coated NPs as functions of distance
between the two particles. Our results reveal that polydisperse distribution stabilizes dispersions
more efficiently than monodisperse counterparts