  Nanocomposite materials made of block copolymer and nanoparticles display
properties which can be different from the purely polymeric matrix. The
resulting material is a crossover of the original properties of the block
copolymer and the presence of the assembled nanoparticles. We propose a
mesoscopic study via cell dynamic simulations to quantitatively assert the
properties of such hybrid materials. The most relevant parameters are
identified to be the fraction of nanoparticles in the system and its chemical
affinity, while the nanoparticle size with respect to the block copolymer
length scales plays a role in the assembly. The morphological phase diagram of
the block copolymer is constructed for nanoparticles with chemical affinity
ranging from A-compatible to B-compatible for a symmetric A-B diblock
copolymer. Block-compatible nanoparticles is found to induce a phase transition
due to changes in the effective concentration of the hosting phase, while
interface-compatible particles induces the appearance of two new phases due to
the saturation of the diblock copolymer interface.
