Search

Graft copolymers with diblock side-chains in a selective solvent can self-assemble into atypical vesicles with monolayered and multilayered nonlamellar structures, subject to the same copolymer concentration.

Background The hydrolysis rate of an ester is essential for the choice of materials in sustainable and eco-friendly applications. Methods In this work, the autoencoder (AE) model has been constructed to predict the hydrolysis rate by inputting SMILES and partial charges. Moreover, the conditional autoencoder (CAE) model has been developed to design chemical structures of esters that possess hydrolysis rates close to the desired value. Significant Findings By implementing the SMILES enumeration technique and the attention mechanism, our AE model exhibits significantly better performance than SPARC based on the root mean square error. For six biodegradable esters that have no experimental rate constants, the predictions of our AE model are in agreement with those based on the activation energies calculated from Dmol3. To design an ester satisfying the desired conditions, our CAE model demonstrates its capability of providing the best candidates of esters and their rate constants based on structural similarity and the least difference of hydrolysis rates. The derived structures are similar to the desired structure and their rate constants are close to the targeted value.

Hypothesis Manipulating droplet transportation without inputting work is desired and important in microfluidic systems. Although the creation of wettability gradient on surfaces has been employed to achieve this goal, the transport distance is very limited, hindering its applications in long-term operations. Experiments Here, we show that programming long-ranged transport of droplets on surfaces can be achieved by the addition of trisiloxane surfactants and the creation of deep grooves. The former provides Marangoni stress to actuate the droplet motion and also reduces the inherent contact line pinning. The latter acts as a railing to guide the motion of surfactant-laden droplets to follow various layouts with geometric features of roads. Findings It is found that the droplets with microliters can move over 20 cm. This work-free method is applicable to a variety of substrate materials and liquids. By using self-running shuttles, a convenient platform for liquid cargos transport is developed and demonstrated. Moreover, the coalescence of cargos carried by different shuttles is accomplished in a three-branch layout, revealing new droplet microreactors.

It is known that the adhesive property and mechanical strength of an apolar polymer can be improved by grafting with polar side chains, whereas the underlying mechanism is still elusive. In this work, the equilibrium structure and mechanical moduli of the melt of graft copolymers have been explored by dissipative particle dynamics. Due to the strong immiscibility of the non-polar backbone and polar side chains, nano-clusters of side chains formed and acted as physical crosslinkers. Moreover, non-affinity adsorption of polar side chains in the melt to the wall was observed, revealing an improvement in the adhesion property. Subjecting graft copolymers to cyclic deformation, the storage and loss moduli were acquired, and they grew with increasing grafting density. The melt strength in terms of the crossover frequency ascended with more side chains on the backbone. Our findings reveal that the strengthening of the mechanical properties of graft copolymers can be attributed to the formation of weakly cross-linked structures, thus offering an insight into the molecular design to aid the development of stronger graft copolymers.

Preferential adsorption of nanorods onto smooth walls is investigated using dissipative particle dynamics in the absence of specific attraction and a depletant. Although the translational and rotational entropy of nanorods is significantly reduced after adsorption, the effective attraction between the nanorod and wall is clearly identified based on the distribution profile of rods. As the rod length increases, the attractive interaction grows stronger and clusters of aligned nanorods can emerge on the smooth wall. However, the presence of a depletion zone of nanorods adjacent to the adsorbed layer gives zero surface excess. These two regions correspond to the primary minimum and maximum mean force potentials observed. Since adsorbed nanorods lose their rotational and translational entropy, the strong adsorption of long nanorods has to be attributed to the entropy gain associated with the increase in free volume for the solvent in this athermal system. Nonetheless, as the surface roughness is present, entropy-driven attraction is lessened, similar to the depletion force between colloids.

Hybrid membranes of lipids and AxByAz triblock copolymers can possess better biocompatibility and mechanical stability. In this work, triblock copolymer conformations and stability of asymmetric me...

The stimuli-responsive membrane with ON/OFF-switchable pores has various applications such as targeted drug delivery and biosensor. In this work, the perforated vesicle/membrane self-assembled from...

Hypothesis For macroscopic systems, the interfacial properties are size-independent and Young’s equation is generally valid for smooth substrates. For nanoscale systems, however, size-dependence and failure of Young’s equation may emerge. Experiments The wetting behavior of a nanodroplet containing two miscible liquids on a smooth substrate is explored by many-body dissipative particle dynamics simulations. The size-dependent surface tension of nanofilms is investigated as well. Findings It is found that Young’s equation is valid for nanodroplets of pure fluids but fails for two-component nanodroplets. The actual contact angle is always larger than the Young’s contact angle, and their difference is getting smaller as the composition approaches pure fluids or the compatibility of the mixture is increased. The failure of Young’s equation is closely associated with the size-dependent behavior in two-component nanodroplets and nanofilms. As the nanodroplet size is increased, the actual contact angle is found to decline but approaches a constant expected in macroscopic systems. Similarly, as the nanofilm thickness is increased, surface tension decreases and reaches its macroscopic value. The change of surface tension is attributed to the size-dependent surface composition, which is responsible for the failure of Young’s equation.

The unjamming-jamming transition of a concentrated oil-in-water emulsion is generally characterized by a critical volume fraction of the dispersed phase. However, in this work, we demonstrate that both liquid-like emulsions and solid-like glasses can coexist in a certain range of volume fraction. At a given volume fraction, jammed glasses can be obtained from their emulsions directly by applying mechanical agitation. This agitation-induced ergodic-nonergodic transition is attributed to the reduction of the droplet size. The decrease of the droplet size leads to a significant growth of lubrication repulsions between neighboring particles. This coexistent behavior indicates that size does matter in concentrated dispersions of soft particles. An application example showed that the elasticity of solid-like glass can give the medium supporting ability while the liquid-like emulsion cannot.

High-performance antifog coatings are critical for devices operating in high-humidity environments, such as endoscopes. However, existing antifog coatings have been unable to achieve good antifoggi...

Directly writing 3D structures into supporting mediums is a relatively new developing technology in additive manufacturing. In this work, durable and recyclable liquid-like solid (LLS) materials are developed as supporting mediums that are stable for both UV and thermal solidification. Our LLS material is comprised of densely packed oil droplets in a continuous aqueous medium, known as emulsion glass. Its elastic nature emerges from the jammed structure of oil droplets, which offers this LLS material rapidly self-healing ability. Moreover, the yield stress of the glass is relatively low and can be tuned by the viscosity and weight percentage of oil. The capability of the emulsion glass as supporting mediums is successfully demonstrated by directly writing and then curing designed structures. The emulsion glass has been repeatedly used at least 6 times upon exposure to UV irradiation and heat, implying it can expand the applications of supporting medium to the writing process involving UV- and thermal-curable inks simultaneously.

The solid-like oil-in-water (O/W) emulsion can be classified into two types, gelator-induced gel and gelator-free glass, based on the requirement of gelator addition and solidification mechanisms. In this work, the O/W emulsion glass with scanty-water belonging to the gelator-free type was successfully fabricated through a low-energy process even when the content of aqueous surfactant solution was as low as 1 wt%. In an attempt to develop this scanty-water O/W glass, two newly designed approaches subject to mechanical agitation were proposed. The first approach of glass formation was induced by the growth of glass nuclei, which is similar to the mechanism of crystal growth. In the second approach, the water content in the emulsion was diluted by oil addition, leading to the direct transformation from emulsion to glass. Both approaches undergo a crossover associated with the jamming transition. According to rheological measurements, our emulsion glasses possess solid-like behaviors such as elastic modulus and yield stress. Moreover, the O/W glass with scanty-water can be strengthened by reducing the water content.

Smart surfaces with switchable wettability for both aqueous and non-aqueous drops have aroused much interest because of their potential applications. In this work, a facile approach for the creation of tunable surface wettability on hydroxyl surfaces with rapid switch at ambient temperature is developed. Both surface hydrophobicity and oleophobicity are enhanced after a fluoro-surfactant solution rinse which acts as a stimulus. The reversal of surface wettability can be achieved simply by a rinse of aqueous solution of hexadecyltrimethylammonium bromide. This rapid wettability-switching property may be attributed to surface modification by physisorbed monolayer of fluoro-surfactant. When adopting a simple but effective pretreatment associated with surface roughening and oxidation, an extreme wettability change (between superhydrophilicity and superhydrophobicity) for both water and hexadecane drops can be achieved. This novel route is found to be durable and can be applied to a variety of surface materials including metal, ceramics, and polymer.

The morphology and wetting stability of nanofilms formed by AyByCz miktoarm star terpolymers were explored by many-body dissipative particle dynamics. The length ratio of C- to A-arm (w = z/y) rang...

The behavior of run-and-tumble nanoswimmers which can self-propel in two immiscible liquids such as water–oil systems and are able to cross the interface is investigated by dissipative particle dynamics. At the steady-state, the partition ratio (φ) of nanoswimmers between the two immiscible liquids is obtained, and it depends on the active force (Fa), run time (τ), and swimmer–solvent interactions. The partition ratio φ is found to grow generally with increasing Fa2τ. At sufficiently large Fa, it is surprising to find that hydrophilic nanoswimmers prefer to stay in the oil phase rather than in the water phase. The partition ratio is also influenced by the hydrophobicity of swimmers in the oil phase. Two simple models are proposed to describe the partition ratio, including a near-equilibrium model and a kinetic model. Surface accumulation appearing at an impenetrable interface is also observed at the fluid–fluid interface for small Fa but it vanishes for sufficiently large Fa.

Large-scale spatial arrangement and orientation ordering of nanorod assembly on substrates are critical for nanodevice fabrication. However, complicated processes and templates or surface modification of nanorods are often required. In this work, we demonstrate, by dissipative particle dynamics simulations, that various ordered structures of adsorbed nanorods on smooth substrates can be simply achieved by non-affinity adsorption. The structures of interfacial assembly, including monolayers with a nematic-like arrangement and multilayer stacking with a smectic-like arrangement, depend on the nanorod concentration and the solvent size. As the nanorod concentration increases, the adsorbed layer becomes densely packed and the arrangement of nanorods changes from nematic-like to smectic. The assembly process driven by entropy is a two-dimensional layer-by-layer growth. Multilayer stacking with a smectic-like arrangement takes place at dilute concentrations of nanorods for large solvents such as pentamers, but at concentrated concentrations, it takes place for small solvents such as monomers. Moreover, nanorod bundles appear in the bulk phase for large solvents at dilute concentrations. The proposed strategy for interfacial assembly is caused by the free volume released for solvents, which is independent of the chemical compositions of substrates and nanorods.

Geometric and chemical defects are frequently found or created on smooth graphene for applications of nanofluidics. In this work, imbibition dynamics and steady flows of water in graphene nanochannels with sparse defects are explored by molecular dynamics. The water contact angle is raised slightly by geometric defects (hole and protrusion) but lowered significantly by chemical defects (hydroxyl and epoxide groups). In steady flows, the mean velocity and slip length are always reduced by sparse defects and the effect of chemical defects is more significant than that of geometric defects. Moreover, it is interesting to find that the velocity profile is plug-like for geometric defects but becomes parabolic for chemical defects, regardless of the slip length. Sparse defects on graphene nanoslits also affect the imbibition dynamics remarkably, which generally follows Washburn's equation with the slip length. For chemical defects, surface friction (slip length) dominates over the driving force associated with surface wettability (contact angle). Nonetheless, for protrusion defects, the stick-slip behavior caused by contact line pinning and thermal fluctuations can be observed. Our new and novel findings indicate that the defect nature is crucial in nanoscale flows and imbibition processes, which the conventional hydrodynamic theory fails to depict.

Wicking into open channels with branches is frequently adopted in multiple assays for medical testing. The penetration velocity plays a key role in improving efficiency. However, it is significantly reduced in the bifurcation microfluidic systems. As a result, understanding and enhancing wicking dynamics in bifurcation capillary flow is imperative. Capillary imbibition into a two-rail channel with periodical branches is investigated by many-body dissipative particle dynamics. The influences of the branch width and surface wettability on the penetration velocity and imbibition flow rate are examined. Four different types of spontaneous capillary flows are observed, including no invasion into branches, reduction in the penetration velocity, stick-slip motion, and inter-branch gap covered by liquid. Four regimes are identified accordingly, the phase diagram relates the flow behavior to the branch width, and surface wettability is established. As the branch width is significantly large (small gap), the penetration velocity is found to be greater than that without branches. It is attributed to the partial covering behavior, which leads to the effective width more than the main channel width.

In a channel connected to a reservoir, passive particles prefer staying in the reservoir than the channel due to the entropic effect, as the size of the particles is comparable to that of the channel. Self-propelled rods can exhibit out-of-equilibrium phenomena, and their partition behavior may differ from that of passive rods due to their persistent swimming ability. In this work, the distribution of active nano-rods between the nanoscale channel and reservoir is explored using dissipative particle dynamics. The ratio of the nano-rod concentration in the slit to that in the reservoir, defined as the partition ratio Ψ, is a function of active force, channel width, and rod length. Although passive nano-rods prefer staying in bulk (Ψ1), active rods can overcome the entropic barrier and show favorable partition toward narrow channels (Ψ1). As the slit width decreases to about the rod's width, active rods entering the slit behave like a quasi-two-dimensional system dynamically. At sufficiently high concentrations and Peclet numbers, nano-rods tend to align and move together in the same direction for a certain time. The distribution (PM) of the cluster size (M) follows a power law, PM ∝ M-2, for small clusters.

Hypothesis Thermal activation plays an essential role in contact line dynamics on nanorough surfaces. However, the relation between the aforementioned concept and the sliding motion of nanodroplets remains unclear. As a result, thermally assisted motion of nanodroplets on nanorough surfaces is investigated in this work. Experiments Steady slide and random motion of nanodroplets on surfaces with weak defects are investigated by Many-body Dissipative Particle Dynamics. The surface roughness is characterized by the slip length acquired from the velocity profile associated with the flowing film. Findings The slip length is found to decline with increasing the defect density. The linear relationship between the sliding velocity and driving force gives the mobility and reveals the absence of contact line pinning. On the basis of the Navier condition, a simple relation is derived and states that the mobility is proportional to the slip length and the reciprocal of the product of viscosity and contact area. Our simulation results agree excellently with the theoretical prediction. In the absence of external forces, a two-dimensional Brownian motion of nanodroplets is observed and its mean square displacement decreases with increasing the defect density. The diffusivity is proportional to the mobility, consistent with the Einstein relation. This consequence suggests that thermal fluctuations are able to overcome contact line pinning caused by weak defects.

The Si3N4 layers in a 3D NAND flash patterned wafer are generally removed by hot phosphoric acid. However, the abnormal deposition of silicate which is the by-product from Si3N4 etching onto the neighboring SiO2 layers will cause a serious problem in the subsequent process. In this work, the abnormal deposition phenomenon was investigated by a simple system containing a narrow gap (~ 80 μm) between two blanket wafers. To understand the mechanism, the influences of various factors on the chemical etching dynamics were examined, including the water content and the extent of mechanical agitation. It is found that the growth rate of SiO2 decreases as the water content or the extent of agitation is increased. Our experimental results reveal that the abnormal growth on SiO2 layers is a consequence of the competition between chemical deposition and mass transfer in a confined space (reaction–diffusion system).

The nonvolatile N,N-dimethylformamide (DMF) droplet can display peculiar wetting behavior on some substrates such as poly(methyl methacrylate), flame-treated brass, and sapphire. Similar to the exp...

Zeolites are microporous crystalline materials widely used in catalysis and adsorption applications. The fabrication of zeolite thin films and membranes has also opened up the possibility of using zeolites in electronic devices and membrane separations. The existing approach to growing zeolite films involves exposing the substrate to a high-pH environment; however, this process is applicable to only specific types of substrates. Our group has developed the direct wet deposition of zeolites via ultrasonic nozzle spray deposition to address this issue; however, the relationship between wetting properties and thin-film quality has yet to be investigated. In this study, we prepared zeolite CHA (Si:Al:P = 3:10:20) suspensions using different solvents and surfactants in various concentrations. We then examined the relationships among the composition of the cast solution, their wetting behavior on the glass substrate, and the uniformity of the resulting thin films. We found that using ethanol as a solvent with zeolite crystals in low concentrations with added surfactant yielded zeolite films of high quality. We were also able to produce low-haze zeolite coatings on glass. The zeolite coatings with high hydrophilicity and adsorption capacity presented excellent antifogging capability.

The interactions between liquid drops and ideal defects (protrusion or trench) on a contact angle hysteresis (CAH) free surface were studied by experiments and Surface Evolver (SE) simulations. The CAH-free characteristic was achieved by the slippery liquid-infused porous surface (SLIPS) and the ideal defects were constructed on such a CAH-free surface. Both hydrophobic (water) and lyophilic (hexadecane) systems were considered. The force (attraction and repulsion) between a drop and a defect was determined by the inclination experiments. Regardless of the surface wettability, the drop tends to adhere to the protrusion on a horizontal plane. A critical force corresponding to a critical tilted angle is required to detach the drop from the protrusion to overcome the attraction between them. In contrast, during the encounter of a drop with a trench, the pass of the drop is resisted by the trench, irrespective of the surface wettability. When the external force exceeds the critical value, the drop crosses the trench directly in the hydrophobic system but impregnates the trench in the lyophilic system. For all cases studied, the experimental results agree well with the simulation outcomes. This work provides insights into the influence of surface roughness on droplet wetting.

In the context of dynamic wetting, wall slip is often treated as a microscopic effect for removing viscous stress singularity at a moving contact line. In most drop spreading experiments, however, a considerable amount of slip may occur due to the use of polymer liquids such as silicone oils, which may cause significant deviations from the classical Tanner–de Gennes theory. Here we show that many classical results for complete wetting fluids may no longer hold due to wall slip, depending crucially on the extent of de Gennes’s slipping ‘foot’ to the relevant length scales at both the macroscopic and microscopic levels. At the macroscopic level, we find that for given liquid height $h$ and slip length $\unicode[STIX]{x1D706}$, the apparent dynamic contact angle $\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}_{d}$ can change from Tanner’s law $\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}_{d}\sim Ca^{1/3}$ for $h\gg \unicode[STIX]{x1D706}$ to the strong-slip law $\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}_{d}\sim Ca^{1/2}\,(L/\unicode[STIX]{x1D706})^{1/2}$ for $h\ll \unicode[STIX]{x1D706}$, where $Ca$ is the capillary number and $L$ is the macroscopic length scale. Such a no-slip-to-slip transition occurs at the critical capillary number $Ca^{\ast }\sim (\unicode[STIX]{x1D706}/L)^{3}$, accompanied by the switch of the ‘foot’ of size $\ell _{F}\sim \unicode[STIX]{x1D706}Ca^{-1/3}$ from the inner scale to the outer scale with respect to $L$. A more generalized dynamic contact angle relationship is also derived, capable of unifying Tanner’s law and the strong-slip law under $\unicode[STIX]{x1D706}\ll L/\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}_{d}$. We not only confirm the two distinct wetting laws using many-body dissipative particle dynamics simulations, but also provide a rational account for anomalous departures from Tanner’s law seen in experiments (Chen, J. Colloid Interface Sci., vol. 122, 1988, pp. 60–72; Albrecht et al., Phys. Rev. Lett., vol. 68, 1992, pp. 3192–3195). We also show that even for a common spreading drop with small macroscopic slip, slip effects can still be microscopically strong enough to change the microstructure of the contact line. The structure is identified to consist of a strongly slipping precursor film of length $\ell \sim (a\unicode[STIX]{x1D706})^{1/2}Ca^{-1/2}$ followed by a mesoscopic ‘foot’ of width $\ell _{F}\sim \unicode[STIX]{x1D706}Ca^{-1/3}$ ahead of the macroscopic wedge, where $a$ is the molecular length. It thus turns out that it is the ‘foot’, rather than the film, contributing to the microscopic length in Tanner’s law, in accordance with the experimental data reported by Kavehpour et al. (Phys. Rev. Lett., vol. 91, 2003, 196104) and Ueno et al. (Trans. ASME J. Heat Transfer, vol. 134, 2012, 051008). The advancement of the microscopic contact line is still led by the film whose length can grow as the $1/3$ power of time due to $\ell$, as supported by the experiments of Ueno et al. and Mate (Langmuir, vol. 28, 2012, pp. 16821–16827). The present work demonstrates that the behaviour of a moving contact line can be strongly influenced by wall slip. Such slip-mediated dynamic wetting might also provide an alternative means for probing slippery surfaces.

Self-healing atypical liquid-infused surfaces (ALIS) which demonstrate very high bubble/drop angles (>160°) and ultra-low contact angle hysteresis (CAH

Hypothesis Recently, the naoncapillary devices with the channel width about 2–3 water molecules have been fabricated. Water transport through these nanoslits showed unexpectedly fast flow, revealing the failure of Washburn’s equation. Experiments Liquid penetration into a nanocapillary made of two parallel walls is explored by many-body dissipative particle dynamics. Both partial wetting and total wetting walls are considered and the no-slip boundary condition is satisfied. Findings The wicking velocity generally obeys Washburn’s equation, but the dynamic contact angle (CA) has to be employed. The dynamic CA (θD) relies on the penetration rate and is always larger than the equilibrium CA. The breakdown of Washburn’s equation occurs under two conditions, (i) the channel width close to molecular size and (ii) the positive spreading coefficient is large enough. Both cases come about when the wicking velocity in a nanoslit exceeds the maximum value corresponding to cos(θD) = 1. The failure of Washburn’s equation is attributed to the invalidity of Young-Laplace equation associated with undefined meniscus. The extended meniscus will be developed as a wall of the nanoslit continues to extend outside the exit mouth. The shapes of extended menisci are discussed for both partial wetting and total wetting surfaces.

Patterning dewetting of a nanoscale polymer film on a brush layer is investigated by many-body dissipative particle dynamics. Four types of autophobic dewetting phenomena are clearly identified: (i...

Zeolites are strongly hydrophilic materials that are widely used as water adsorbents. They are also promising candidates for antifogging coatings; however, researchers have yet to devise a suitable method for coating glass substrates with zeolite-based films. Here, we report on a direct wet deposition technique that is capable of casting zeolite films on glass substrates without exposing the glass to highly basic solutions or the vapors used in zeolite synthesis. We began by preparing cast solutions of pure silica zeolite MFI synthesized in hydrothermal reactions of various durations. The solutions were then applied to glass substrates via spin-on deposition to form zeolite films. The resulting zeolite MFI thin films were characterized in terms of transmittance to visible light, surface topography, thin film morphology, and crystallinity. Wetting and antifogging properties were also probed. We found that hydrophilicity and antifogging capability increased with the degree of thin film crystallinity. We also determined that the presence of the amorphous silica in the thin films is critical to transparency. Fabricating high-performance zeolite-based antifogging coatings requires an appropriate composition of zeolite crystals and amorphous silica.

Spontaneous capillary flow is generally described by Washburn’s equation. However, the modification must be made for imbibition dynamics in an open channel. Moreover, the presence of the holes in the capillary for flow division or bifurcation complicates the outcome of the imbibition process. In this work, capillary imbibition into a two-rail channel with/without holes is investigated by many-body dissipative particle dynamics (MDPD). The influences of channel height (h), channel width (w), hole size (wh), and surface wettability ( θ Y ) on the imbibition rate are examined. For two-rail channel without holes, the simulation results agree reasonably with Washburn’s equation with the correction 1 - ( h / w )/cos θ Y . The penetration rate grows with reducing the channel height or enlarging the channel width. However, in the presence of holes, the wicking dynamics is slowed down and four types of outcomes are observed: “covering”, “separation”, “pass/stop”, and “stoppage”. These states depend on the size and (symmetric or asymmetric) position of the rectangular hole. Finally, the phase diagrams which vary with θ Y , wh/h, and w/h are constructed. The domains of those states agree reasonably with the equations acquired simply from the analyses of surface free energy.

The size-dependent behavior of nanofilms and nanodroplets of homologous polymer blends was explored by many-body dissipative particle dynamics. Although a homologous blend can be regarded as a completely miscible and athermal system, enrichment of the surface in short polymers always takes place. First, liquid–gas and solid–liquid interfacial tensions of polymer melts were acquired. It is found that they increase and approach asymptotes with increasing chain lengths. The molecular weight dependence can be depicted using two semi-empirical expressions. Second, the variation of surface tension and surface excess of polymer blend nanofilms with the thickness was observed. Surface tension of the blend is observed to increase but the extent of surface segregation decreases upon increasing the film thickness. Finally, the wetting phenomenon of nanodroplets of homologous blends was examined. The contact angle is found to increase as the droplet size is reduced. Our simulation results indicate that the size-dependence of nanofilms and nanodroplets is closely related to surface segregation in homologous blends.

Hybrid membranes formed by co-assembly of AxByAx (hydrophilic-hydrophobic-hydrophilic) triblock copolymers into lipid bilayers are investigated by dissipative particle dynamics. Homogeneous hybrid membranes are developed as lipids and polymers are fully compatible. The polymer conformations can be simply classified into bridge- and loop-structures in the membranes. It is interesting to find that the long-time fraction of loop-conformation (fL) of copolymers in the membrane depends significantly on the hydrophilic block length (x). As x is small, an equilibrium fL* always results irrespective of the initial conformation distribution and its value depends on the hydrophobic block length (y). For large x, fL tends to be time-invariant because polymers are kinetically trapped in their initial structures. Our findings reveal that only symmetric hybrid membranes are formed for small x, while membranes with stable asymmetric leaflets can be constructed with large x. The effects of block lengths on the polymer conformations, such as transverse and lateral spans (d&perp, and d||) of bridge- and loop-conformations, are discussed as well.