Abstract
Giuseppe D'Adamo: „Consistent and transferable coarse-grained model for polymer solutions”
Universita' di Roma "La Sapienza", Italy
I present a coarse-grained model for linear polymers with a tunable number of effective atoms (blobs) per chain interacting by intra- and inter-molecular potentials obtained at zero polymer density. I show how this model is able to accurately reproduce the universal properties of the underlying solution of athermal linear chains at various levels of coarse-graining and in a range of chain densities which can be widened by increasing the spatial resolution of the multiblob representation, i.e., the number of blobs per chain. The present model is unique in its ability to quantitatively predict thermodynamic and large scale structural properties of polymer solutions deep in the semidilute regime with a very limited computational effort, overcoming most of the problems related to the simulations of semidilute polymer solutions in good solvent conditions. I also present results concerning polymer systems in the good-to-theta solvent crossover regime. Also in this case it is possible to define a model which is simultaneously transferable with respect to the number of blobs, density and temperature.