Effect of the side-arm architecture on the conformational properties of bottle brushes

The conformational properties of bottle brushes with identical backbone lengths, grafting densities, and molecular masses of side arms, but different architectures of the arms, are studied via the Langevin dynamics method within the coarse-grained model. Volume interactions correspond to athermal-solvent conditions. The sizes and shapes of a whole macromolecule and its backbone and the mutual arrangement and deformation of the side arms are determined. The induced persistence length of the brush backbone, a property that characterizes the rigidifying effect of interactions between side arms, is estimated. It is shown that, for the considered model parameters, the induced persistence length is independent of the side-arm architecture, in agreement with predictions obtained earlier in the mean-field approximation.