Study of the Colloidal Interactions Between Microemulsion Nanodroplets in the Presence of Telechelic Polymers: Theory and Experiment

Abstract

The aim of this work is an extensive study of the colloidal interactions between positively charged O/W microemulsion spherical nanodroplets, in the presence of telechelic polymers PEO-m (one end-grafted) or PEO-2m (double end-grafted) by using Small Angle Neutron Scattering. First, we compute the structure factor using the Ornstein-Zernike integral equation approach together with the hypernetted chain (HNC) closure relation, with an effective pair potential for each experimental situation. Second, we show that adding PEO-m strengthens repulsive interaction, while an addition of PEO-2m induces rather an attractive interaction by bridging between nanodroplets. Finally, the agreement between the calculated and experimental spectra is reasonable and allows a quantitative description for each mixed system.