NEUTRAL AND CHARGED POLYMER BRUSHES - A MODEL UNIFYING CURVATURE EFFECTS FROM MICELLES TO FLAT SURFACES

Conformations of neutral and charged brushes on spheres have been expl ored for diblock and triblock copolymers adsorbed on colloidal particl es and associated in micelles. The variation of layer thickness L with adsorbed amount for a wide range of core radii R (0.04 < L/R < 20) ag rees well with the blob model of Daoud and Cotton for neutral polymers and a new ''electrostatic blob model'' for semirigid polyelectrolytes . The latter combines the Daoud and Cotton model with the electrostati c wormlike chain theory for polyelectrolytes to account for chain stif fening and excluded volume interactions inside the blobs.