Bottlebrush polymers cylindrical

Bottlebrush polymers contain a long flexible macromolecule as a backbone to which side chains, which may also be flexible, are grafted [59, 60]. The idea then is that via suitable choices of parameters such as the grafting density, solvent quality, and side chain molecular weight the local stiffness of this cylindrical molecular brush can be controlled. The qualitative pictine one draws is that of a wormlike... 

For the simulations we consider cylindrical bottlebrush polymers, where two types (A, B) of flexible side chains of length Na, A b are densely grafted to a backbone. The degree of (in)compatibility between these constituents can be characterized by a Flory-Huggins parameter and the solvent quality is described by... 

Poly(macromonomers) with moderately long side chains attached to every few (second) atom along the backbone are very densely branched polymers. When the degree of polymerization of the backbone is low then the poly(macromon-mers) tend to resemble star polymers [39, 40]. When the degree of polymerization is very high the poly(macromonomer) acquires a cylindrical conformation (bottlebrush), due to the stretching and linearization of the backbone [40]. 

When a linear polymer is grafted with a large number of much shorter side chains, cylindrical polymer brushes are formed [33, 108-111]. They are also denoted as bottlebrushes or molecular brushes. Although most cylindrical polymer brushes contain linear side chains, dendritic or even hyperbranched space demanding grafts can also render cylindrical shapes, which leads to the so-called dendronized [112-116] andhypergrafted[117, 118] polymers, respectively. In this review, we will focus on cylindrical brushes with linear side chains. Due to their anisotropic nature in topology, they have attracted more and more research interest in their synthesis, bulk, or solution properties, as well as applications. 

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