# Studying synthesis confinement effects on the internal structure of nanogels in computer simulations

## TL;DR

This study uses computer simulations to explore how droplet size during synthesis affects the internal structure of nanogels, revealing that confinement influences density distribution and network topology.

## Contribution

It introduces a bead-spring model to simulate confined crosslinking, showing how confinement levels alter nanogel internal density and topology compared to previous unconfined models.

## Key findings

- Strong confinement leads to less dense centers in nanogels.
- Moderate confinement results in denser central regions.
- Network topology varies with confinement and ionic conditions.

## Abstract

We study the effects of droplet finite size on the structure of nanogel particles synthesized by random crosslinking of molecular polymers diluted in nanoemulsions. For this, we use a bead-spring computer model of polymer-like structures that mimics the confined random crosslinking process corresponding to irradiation- or electrochemically-induced crosslinking methods. Our results indicate that random crosslinking under strong confinement can lead to unusual nanogel internal structures, with a central region less dense than the external one, whereas under moderate confinement the resulting structure has a denser central region. We analyze the topology of the polymer networks forming nanogel particles with both types of architectures, their overall structural parameters, their response to the quality of the solvent and compare the cases of non-ionic and ionic systems.