Related papers: Design of Copolymeric Materials
We describe a computational model for studying the complexity of self-assembled structures with active molecular components. Our model captures notions of growth and movement ubiquitous in biological systems. The model is inspired by…
The microphase separated morphology of a melt of a specific class of comb-coil diblock copolymers, consisting of an AB comb block and a linear homopolymer A block, is analyzed in the weak segregation limit. On increasing the length of the…
Obtaining a rigorous and reliable method for linking computer simulations of polymer blends and composites at different length scales of interest is a highly desirable goal in soft matter physics. In this paper a multiscale modeling…
The rational design of novel polymers with tailored material properties has been a long-standing challenge in the field due to the large number of possible polymer design variables. To accelerate this design process, there is a critical…
Understanding the complex self-assembly of biomacromolecules is a major outstanding question. Microtubules are one example of a biopolymer that possesses characteristics quite distinct from standard synthetic polymers that are derived from…
Multiblock copolymer chains in implicit nonselective solvents are studied by Monte Carlo method which employs a parallel tempering algorithm. Chains consisting of 120 $A$ and 120 $B$ monomers, arranged in three distinct microarchitectures:…
The structural phase behavior of polymer brushes, single-component linear homopolymers grafted onto a planar substrate, is studied using the molecular Monte Carlo method in 3 dimensions. When simulation parameters of the system are set in…
An innovative method is proposed to generate configurations of coarse grained models for polymer melts. This method, largely inspired by chemical ``radical polymerization'', is divided in three stages: (i) nucleation of radicals (reacting…
The correlations between the sequence of monomers in a polymer and its three-dimensional structure is a grand challenge in polymer science and biology. The properties and functions of macromolecules depend on their 3D shape that has…
We present a simple model describing the assembly and disassembly of heteropolymers consisting of two types of monomers $A$ and $B$. We prove that no matter how we manipulate the concentrations of $A$ and $B$, it takes longer than the…
We study the conformational properties of heteropolymers containing two types of monomers A and B, modeled as self-avoiding random walks on a regular lattice. Such a model can describe in particular the sequences of hydrophobic and…
We use molecular dynamics simulations to study the static properties of a single linear multiblock copolymer chain under poor solvent conditions varying the block length $N$, the number of blocks $n$, and the solvent quality by variation of…
In this work, we study a system of coupled Cahn-Hilliard equations describing the phase separation of a copolymer and a homopolymer blend. The numerical methods we propose are based on suitable combinations of existing schemes for the…
In this work we consider the inverse problem of finding guiding pattern shapes that result in desired self-assembly morphologies of block copolymer melts. Specifically, we model polymer self-assembly using Self-Consistent Field Theory and…
Polymeric micelles are used in a variety of applications, with the micelle's shape often playing an important role. Consequently, a scheme to design micelles of arbitrary shape is desirable. In this paper, we consider micelles formed from a…
Selective targeting of membranes with a specific receptor profile is an ongoing challenge in targeted drug delivery. We investigate the adsorption of copolymers on a multicomponent receptor-covered surface using grand-canonical Monte Carlo…
Block copolymer (BCP) melt assembly has been the subject of decades of study, with focus largely on self-organized spatial patterns of periodically-ordered segment density. In this study, we demonstrate that underlying these otherwise…
Phase separation of multicomponent liquid mixtures plays an integral part in many processes ranging from industry to cellular biology. In many cases the morphology of coexisting phases is crucially linked to the function of the separated…
Analysis of molecular scale interactions and chemical structure offers an enormous opportunity to tune material properties for targeted applications. However, designing materials from molecular scale is a grand challenge owing to the…
At the cutting edge of materials science, matter is designed to self-organize into structures that perform a wide range of functions. The past two decades have witnessed major innovations in the versatility of building blocks, ranging from…