  A coarse grained model for flexible polymers end-grafted to repulsive
spherical nanoparticles is studied for various chain lengths and grafting
densities under good solvent conditions, by Molecular Dynamics methods and
density functional theory. With increasing chain length the monomer density
profile exhibits a crossover to the star polymer limit. The distribution of
polymer ends and the linear dimensions of individual polymer chains are
obtained, while the inhomogeneous stretching of the chains is characterized by
the local persistence lengths. The results on the structure factor of both
single chain and full spherical brush as well as the range of applicability of
the different theoretical tools are presented. Eventually an outlook on
experiments is given.
