[SY-H10] Dynamical properties of suspensions of star block-copolymers in shear flow.
Star block-copolymers (SBCs) are versatile building blocks with specific softness, functionalization, shape, and flexibility. They self-organize into a large variety of soft patchy nanoparticles, whose conformations and patchiness can be tuned and modified by different chemical-physical parameters. The static equilibrium properties of concentrated suspensions of SBCs have been an object of several studies because of the rich variety of assembly scenarios that can be achieved. In this work, we took a step forward in the study of non-equilibrium properties of suspensions of SBCs. By means of a particle-based, multiscale simulation approach, which combines standard molecular dynamics (MD) for the star monomers and multiparticle collision dynamics (MPCD) for the solvent particles, we investigated the behavior of dilute suspensions of SBCs under lineal shear flow for a wide range of parameters of the system; the latter include the functionality, the polymerization degree and the amphiphilicity degree of the star, the monomer packing fraction, the solvent quality, and the shear rate. Our analysis focus on the dynamical behavior of the at-equilibrium-formed network structures as a consequence of the patches reorganization induced by the shear flow. The obtained results have interesting implications on the system’s rheological properties and viscoelastic responses in dilute bulk phases because the SBCs are able to form a variety of different intermolecular transient bonds involving rather weak ones between individual arms and much stronger ones between multiarm patches.