Height-Switching Dynamics of Mixed Polymer Brushes with Polymers of Different Stiffnesses

Abstract

Mixed brushes consisting of flexible and semiflexible polymers of the same chain length exhibit a height-switching phenomenon because of rigidity-dependent critical adsorption [Yang et al. Macromolecules 2020, 53, 7369]. Semiflexible polymers stand higher at weak surface attraction (high temperature), but they close to the attractive surface at strong attraction (low temperature). In this work, the height-switching dynamics of the mixed polymer brushes is studied by Metropolis Monte Carlo simulation. The height-switching time is calculated by a sudden change in the surface attraction. Two surface attraction change modes, i.e., the weak-to-strong mode where the attraction is changed from weak to strong and the strong-to-weak mode where it is changed from strong to weak, are investigated. Simulation results show that the height-switching time is related to the grafting density, the polymer stiffness, and surface attraction change mode. We find that the height-switching time is significantly decreased for the strong-to-weak mode. And our results also show that the height switching in the mixed polymer brushes is reversible.