ИСТИНА

Polymer microgels are known to be soft adaptive particles which can effectively stabilize emulsions. In contrast to their solid counterparts, such macromolecules are stimuli-responsive (to temperature, pH, ect.) and can undergo spreading while being absorbed at the interface of incompatible liquids and thus occupy larger area with higher adsorption kinetics. The ability of microgels to swell and their permeability to low-molecular-weight liquids can make microgel-stabilized emulsions promising for many applications including biphasic catalysis. Another effect can occur if both liquids will be compatible with polymer units. Recently, we discovered that two initially immiscible liquids (“oil” and “water”) can be partially or fully mixed within the microgels at their interface. The reason of enhanced liquids miscibility is related to the screening of unfavorable contacts between liquids by polymeric segments. However, in our previous studies we considered only the homopolymer networks. In present research, we extend our study to the case amphiphilic (AB-copolymer) microgels. Using dissipative particle dynamics (DPD) simulations we studied the internal structure of macromolecular networks in a selective solvent and at the liquid interface. We considered the microgels with different chain lengths, polymer-liquid and liquid-liquid interactions, and chemical composition (random and blocky distribution of A and B segments). In particular, we found that the liquids could form a homogeneous mixture within the network even if their incompatibility is significantly high. Also, in case of asymmetric block copolymer structure we observed the presence of two-phase morphology within the microgel at the interface (the formation of cylinders in water phase and the formation of layers in oil phase by hydrophobic polymer segments