Can polymer coils Be modeled as "Soft colloids"?
We map dilute or semidilute solutions of nonintersecting polymer chains onto a fluid of "soft" particles interacting via a concentration dependent effective pair potential, by inverting the pair distribution function of the centers of mass of the initial polymer chains. A similar inversion...
Main Authors: | , , , |
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Format: | Journal article |
Language: | English |
Published: |
2000
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Summary: | We map dilute or semidilute solutions of nonintersecting polymer chains onto a fluid of "soft" particles interacting via a concentration dependent effective pair potential, by inverting the pair distribution function of the centers of mass of the initial polymer chains. A similar inversion is used to derive an effective wall-polymer potential; these potentials are combined to successfully reproduce the calculated exact depletion interaction induced by nonintersecting polymers between two walls. The mapping opens up the possibility of large-scale simulations of polymer solutions in complex geometries. |
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