Figure 6
(a) Schematic of MGs swelling in solution where particles have a spherical shape with radius R and volume V. Vp is the polymer volume and Vmin is the MG particle volume in the collapsed state. (b) The profile of the surface-attached MG particle is modeled as a spherical cup with base radius rb (in both the wet and dry state), height h (in the dry state) and hslab (in the wet state). (c) Schematic of the slab formed by surface attached MGs on the surface in the wet state: V is the single particle volume (i.e. spherical cup) while Vslab indicates the box volume. Note that V is the same quantity in images (a,c). (d) Cross-section of (c) at half-height in the dry state; black circles with radius \(\bar{r}\) indicate the single MG particle boundaries.
