Monte-Carlo Simulations of Two-Dimensional Polymer Solutions with Explicit Solvent Treatment

The static properties of two dimensional athermal polymer solutions with explicit solvent molecules were studied by Monte Carlo lattice simulations using the cooperative motion algorithm (CMA). The simulations were performed for a wide range of polymer chain length N (from 16 to 1024) and polymer concentration (from 0.0156 to 1.00). The results obtained for short chains (N < 256) were in good agreement with theoretical predictions and previous simulations. For the longest chains (512 or 1024 beads) some unexpected behavior in the dilute and semidilute regimes was found. A rapid change in the concentration dependence of the end-to-end distance, the radius of gyration and the chain asphericity was observed below a critical concentration of the microphase separation, ϕc = 0.6 (for N = 1024). At concentrations lower than _c, the chains tends to be more rod-like. Single chain scattering structure factors showed changes in the fractal dimension of the chain as a function of the polymer concentration. The observed phenomena can be related to the excluded volume of solvent molecules, which leads to a modification of chain statistics in the vicinity of other chains.

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Opracowanie ze środków MNiSW w ramach umowy 812/P-DUN/2016 na działalność upowszechniającą naukę (zadania 2017).