Structure Factor of Charged Microemulsion Nanodroplets Decorated with Telechelic Polymers: Experimental and Numerical Study

We investigate thermodynamic and structural properties of positively charged O/W microemulsion spherical nanodroplets, suspended in salt water and decorated with telechelic polymers PEO-m and PEO-2m at low and high volume fraction F (6.98%, 26.5%) by using Small Angle Neutron Scattering (SANS). We describe and propose an effective pair potential interaction between charged colloidal particles in solution both with and without added telechelic polymers PEO-m or PEO-2m.We solve Ornstein-Zernicke (OZ) integral equation in the Hypernetted Chain (HNC) closure relation to obtain the pair correlation function g(r) and the structure factor S(q). A good agreement is found between the experimental and numerical spectra assuming the interaction potentials to be the sum of attractive and repulsive contributions in terms of decoration or bridging of the nanodroplets by the PEO polymer chains.