Static and Dynamic Properties of Bulk Polymer Melts in Equilibrium

   
Polymer Melt
      

The equilibrium behavior of polymer melts is investigated using both Monte Carlo (MC) and Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulations, providing a rigorous test of theoretical models for chain statics and dynamics in the entangled regime.


  • Rouse Mode and Dynamic Scattering Analysis: The dynamic structure factor and the autocorrelation function of Rouse modes are analyzed in detail for highly entangled melts. This work characterizes the crossover from Rouse dynamics to the entangled regime, evaluating the simulation results against the predictions of the reptation model.
"Detailed Analysis of Rouse Mode and Dynamic Scattering Function of Highly Entangled Polymer Melts in Equilibrium", Eur. Phys. J. Special Topics 226, 693 (2017).


  • Static and Dynamic Scaling of Large Melts: High-precision MD simulations of large-scale polymer melts provide a rigorous verification of theoretical scaling predictions for generic properties using the standard bead-spring model. This work critically demonstrates that the entanglement length estimated via primitive path analysis is quantitatively consistent with the stress relaxation plateau modulus, establishing a definitive benchmark for tube-model consistency in modern simulations.
"Static and Dynamic Properties of Large Polymer Melts in Equilibrium", J. Chem. Phys. 144, 154907 (2016).


  • Equilibration Methodology for Lattice Models: An efficient methodology for the preparation and equilibration of dense systems is implemented for the bond fluctuation model. By applying a pre-packing process in MC simulations, the preparation of dense melts is significantly accelerated while strictly maintaining excluded volume constraints.
"Lattice Monte Carlo Simulations of Polymer Melts ", J. Chem. Phys. 141, 234901 (2014).

The Molecular Dynamics simulations in this research were performed using the ESPResSo++ extensible simulation package.
ESPResSo++