8th Liquid Matter Conference September 6-10, 2011 Wien, Austria ...

Wed 711:10-14:00P5.29Phase behavior of solvent-free oligomer-graftednanoparticlesAlexandros Chremos, 1 Athanassios Z. Panagiotopoulos, 1 Donald L. Koch, 1 andHsiu-Yu Yu 21 Princeton University, Olden street, 08540, Princeton, United States of America2 Cornell University, Ithaca, United States of AmericaThe phase behavior of solvent-free polymer-grafted nanoparticles have been investigated usingmolecular dynamics simulations. A coarse-grained model was used, where the nanoparticle isrepresented as a single smooth particle with bead-spring polymer chains attached to it. Motivatedby the recent advances in nanoparticle ionic materials and nanoparticle organic hybrid materials,we use our model to explore the behavior of these systems over a wide range of parameters andgain insights of their structure and transport properties. In particular, we find that by varying thenanoparticle’s size, the grafting density, and the chain length, the system re-organizes to differentphases and spans from liquids to gels and glasses. Phase diagrams have been constructed providinginsights about the role of the molecular characteristics in the system.29