Related papers: Are polymer melts "ideal"?
We use Monte Carlo simulations to study polymer melts consisting of fully flexible and moderately stiff chains in the bond fluctuation model at a volume fraction $0.5$. In order to reduce the local density fluctuations, we test a…
Several methods for preparing well equilibrated melts of long chains polymers are studied. We show that the standard method in which one starts with an ensemble of chains with the correct end-to-end distance arranged randomly in the…
The conformational statistics of ring polymers in melts or dense solutions is strongly affected by their quenched microscopic topological state. The effect is particularly strong for non-concatenated unknotted rings, which are known to…
We analyze structural and conformational properties in a simulated bead-spring model of a non-entangled, supercooled polymer melt. We explore the statics of the model via various structure factors, involving not only the monomers, but also…
An important goal of self-assembly is to achieve a preprogrammed structure with high fidelity. Here, we control the valence of DNA-functionalized emulsions to make linear and branched model polymers, or `colloidomers'. The distribution of…
We report grand canonical Monte Carlo simulations of the critical point properties of homopolymers within the Bond Fluctuation model. By employing Configurational Bias Monte Carlo methods, chain lengths of up to N=60 monomers could be…
We consider polymers in which M randomly selected pairs of monomers are restricted to be in contact. Analytical arguments and numerical simulations show that an ideal (Gaussian) chain of N monomers remains expanded as long as M<<N; its mean…
Synthetic polymers have a distribution of chain lengths which can be characterized by dispersity, D. Macroscopic properties of polymers are influenced by chain mobility in the melt and manipulating D can significantly impact these…
A mode-coupling theory for dense polymeric systems is developed which unifyingly incorporates the segmental cage effect relevant for structural slowing down and polymer chain conformational degrees of freedom. An ideal glass transition of…
We generalize a recently investigated lattice model of semiflexible polymers formed under equilibrium polymerization in a solution and conduct a comprehensive investigation of its melting properties. The model is characterized by six…
The random walk of a bonded monomer in a polymer melt is anisotropic due to local order and bond connectivity. We investigate both effects by molecular-dynamics simulations on melts of fully-flexible linear chains ranging from dimers…
Molecular dynamics simulations are used to investigate the conformations of a single polymer chain, represented by the Kremer-Grest bead-spring model, in a solution with a Lennard-Jones liquid as the solvent when the interaction strength…
The isothermal, isobaric spontaneous crystallization of a supercooled polymer melt is investigated by MD simulation of an ensemble of fully-flexible linear chains. Frustration is introduced via two incommensurate length scales set by the…
We present an in-depth multi-scale analysis of the conformations and dynamics of polar active polymers, comparing very dilute and very dense conditions. We unveil characteristic length and time scales, common to both dilute and dense…
The conformational and electronic properties of conducting flexible random and self-avoiding walk polymer chains are under investigation. A Hamiltonian for conjugated flexible polymers is introduced and its physical consequences are…
An extended Molecular-Dynamics study of the short-time "glassy" elasticity exhibited by a polymer melt of linear fully-flexible chains above the glass transition is presented. The focus is on the infinite-frequency shear modulus $G_\infty$…
Molecular dynamics simulation of a generic polymer model is applied to study melts of polymers with different types of intrinsic stiffness. Important static observables of the single chain such as gyration radius or persistence length are…
Mesoscale behavior of polymers is frequently described by universal laws. This physical property motivates us to propose a new modeling concept, grouping polymers into classes with a common long-wavelength representation. In the same class…
The radius of gyration of a polymer chain immersed in a low molecular weight solvent is known to vary monotonically with the solvent quality. Here, we consider the behavior of a chain immersed in a high molecular weight solvent (polymer…
We present simulations on a binary blend of bead-spring polymer chains. The introduction of monomer size disparity yields very different relaxation times for each component of the blend. Competition between two different arrest mechanisms,…