Bottlebrush polymers in the melt and polyelectrolytes in solution share common structural features.

ABSTRACT: Uncharged bottlebrush polymer melts and highly charged polyelectrolytes in solution exhibit correlation peaks in scattering measurements and simulations. Given the striking superficial similarities of these scattering features, there may be a deeper structural interrelationship in these chemically different classes of materials. Correspondingly, we constructed a library of isotopically labeled bottlebrush molecules and measured the bottlebrush correlation peak position [Formula: see text] by neutron scattering and in simulations. We find that the correlation length scales with the backbone concentration, [Formula: see text], in striking accord with the scaling of ? with polymer concentration c P in semidilute polyelectrolyte solutions [Formula: see text] The bottlebrush correlation peak broadens with decreasing grafting density, similar to increasing salt concentration in polyelectrolyte solutions. ? also scales with sidechain length to a power in the range of 0.35-0.44, suggesting that the sidechains are relatively collapsed in comparison to the bristlelike configurations often imagined for bottlebrush polymers.

SUBMITTER: Sarapas JM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7071916 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature