Molecular Dynamics Simulations of Polymer Welding: Strength from Interfacial Entanglements

Dynamics of various polymer-graphene interfacial systems through atomistic molecular dynamics simulations.

The current work refers to a simulation study on hybrid polymer-graphene interfacial systems. We explore the effect of graphene on the mobility of polymers, by studying three well known and widely used polymers, polyethylene (PE), polystyrene (PS) and poly(methyl-methacrylate) (PMMA). Qualitative and quantitative differences in the dynamical properties of the polymer chains in particular at the...

Viscoelastic Properties of Polymer Melts from Equilibrium Molecular Dynamics Simulations

Introduction. The dynamics of polymer chains are now generally very well understood in the pioneering frameworks of the Rouse model for short chains, and the reptation model for longer chains.1-5 While these theories yield well-known expressions for the variation of the diffusivity D and viscosity η with the chain length N, an open question is the chain length at which one crosses over from Rou...

Molecular Dynamics Simulations of Polar Polymer Brushes

Brushes of end-grafted, polar polymer chains in a good, nonpolar solvent are studied via molecular dynamics simulations of a bead-spring model. The monomers are connected by finitely extensible nonlinear springs. The springs connecting consecutive monomers in a chain are labeled with dipoles parallel to the chain contour. We consider the dipoles as limits of charge pairs, replacing each dipole ...

Molecular dynamics simulations of carbon nanotube/silicon interfacial thermal conductance.

Using molecular dynamics simulations with Tersoff reactive many-body potential for Si-Si, Si-C, and C-C interactions, we have calculated the thermal conductance at the interfaces between carbon nanotube (CNT) and silicon at different applied pressures. The interfaces are formed by axially compressing and indenting capped or uncapped CNTs against 2 x 1 reconstructed Si surfaces. The results show...

Structure, entanglements and dynamics of polymer nanocomposites containing spherical nanoparticles