Self-consistent field theory and its applications in polymer systems

Abstract

This review article addresses the widely used self-consistent field theory (SCFT) in interacting polymer systems. The theoretical framework and numerical method of solving the self-consistent equations are presented. In this paper, different structures of polymer can be considered, such as homopolymer, block copolymer, polydisperse polymer and charged polymer. Several systems, micro/macro phase separation, interface, self-assembly, are presented as examples to demonstrate its applications in details. Besides, the fluctuation effects are considered. The first order is Gaussian fluctuation theory, which can be used to determine the stability of the mean-field solution and predict the kinetics of unstable structure. The derivation and applications of Gaussian fluctuation theory are presented as well.

Keywords

self-consistent field theory (SCFT) / Gaussian fluctuation theory / self-assembly / adsorption / depletion / polyelectrolyte / confinement

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Acknowledgements

We would to thank the other contributors in our group, who are Dr. Hongge Tan, Dr. Shuang Yang and Dr. Shuanhu Qi. Also, we would like to thank Prof. An-Chang Shi for the long-term collaboration. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) (Grant Nos. 20973176, 20990234, 50821062, and 20874111), 973 Program of the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) (Grant No. 2011CB808502), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities.

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2014 Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg