Diffusion of Nanoparticles in Semidilute Polymer Solutions: A Multiparticle Collision Dynamics Study

The diffusion of nanoparticles immersed in semidilute polymer solutions is investigated by a hybrid mesoscopic multiparticle collision dynamics method. Effects of polymer concentration and hydrodynamic interactions among polymer monomers are focused. Extensive simulations show that the dependence of diffusion coefficient D on the polymer concentration c agrees with Phillies equation D-exp (-αc^δ) with a scaling exponent δ≈0.97 which coincides with the experimental one in literature. For increasing nanoparticle size, the scaling prefactor α increases monotonically while the scaling exponent always keeps fixed. Moreover, we also study the diffusion of nanoparticle without hydrodynamic interactions and find that mobility of the nanoparticle slows down, and the scaling exponent is obviously different from the one in experiments, implying that hydrodynamic interactions play a crucial role in the diffusion of a nanoparticle in semidilute polymer solutions.