• Likos, C. N.
• Zaccarelli, E.
• Sciortino, F.
• Reatto, L.
• Dawson, K. A.
• Tartaglia, P.
• Lo Verso, Federica
• Foffi, G.

Abstract

<p>The dynamics of star polymers in athermal solvents theoretically, were analyzed by employing a combination of methods. Using the star-star effective interaction potential, in which all microscopically fluctuating degrees of freedom were averaged out, detailed molecular dynamics (MD) and Brownian dynamics (BD) simulations to measure the diffusivity of the star-polymer fluids down to the homogeneous nucleation limit. It was found that, on increasing the number density of polymer, the characteristic time of the system goes through a sequence of maxima and minima which showed to be related to the oscillatory behavior of the effective hard sphere (HS) diameter.</p>

Topics

• density
• polymer
• simulation
• molecular dynamics
• diffusivity