A review of recent theoretical advances in polymer brushes

In this article, I review my recent theoretical approaches to polymer brushes. By means of the density functional theory (DFT) and the molecular dynamic simulations (MD), the detailed behaviors of polymer brushes are revealed in different situations. It turns out that polymer brush bilayers show shear thinning effect under stationary shear motion only when there is hydrodynamic interactions between monomers. Also, by studying charged brush bilayers under non-equilibrium shear inversion, I reveal that the hydrodynamic interactions are responsible for the mechanical instabilities in the brush bilayers and also I show that the electrostatic interactions between monomers completely suppress these mechanical instabilities. The findings of this study sheds light on our understanding of polymer brushes as a complicated example of soft matter and biological system.