Helical conformation of polymer bottle brushes induced by entropy

Abstract

Helical formation is fairly ubiquitous in nature. Under certain circumstances, entropy may induce polymer chains to form helical structures. In this article, molecular dynamics is applied to illustrate the conformation behaviors of a polymer bottle brush adsorbed onto the surface of a cylinder with infinite length. The helical conformation of a polymer bottle brush is closely related to the number of branch chains as well as the adsorption energy between the polymer bottle brush and the cylinder. Once the adsorption energy is weak, the polymer bottle brush with enough branch chains may form an entropy-induced complete helical structure. Our results may give a deeper insight into polymer helical structural studies.