Pressure-driven assembly of ligand-grafted gold nanoparticle superlattices is a promising approach for fabricating gold nanostructures, such as nanowires and nanosheets. However, optimizing this fabrication method requires an understanding of the mechanics of their complex hierarchical assemblies at high pressures. We use molecular dynamics simulations to characterize the response of alkanethiol-grafted gold nanoparticle superlattices to applied hydrostatic pressures up to 15 GPa, and demonstrate that the internal mechanics significantly depend on ligand length. At low pressures, intrinsic voids govern the mechanics of pressure-induced compaction, and the dynamics of collapse of these voids under pressure depend significantly on ligand length. These microstructural observations correlate well with the observed trends in bulk modulus and elastic constants. For the shortest ligands at high pressures, coating failure leads to gold core-core contact, an augur of irreversible response and eventual sintering. This behavior was unexpected under hydrostatic loading, and was only observed for the shortest ligands.
While nearly all theoretical and computational studies of entangled polymer melts have focused on uniform samples, polymer synthesis routes always result in some dispersity, albeit narrow, of distribution of molecular weights (Crossed D signM=Mw/Mn∼1.02-1.04). Here, the effects of dispersity on chain mobility are studied for entangled, disperse melts using a coarse-grained model for polyethylene. Polymer melts with chain lengths set to follow a Schulz-Zimm distribution for the same average Mw=36 kg/mol with Crossed D signM=1.0 to 1.16, were studied for times of 600-800 μs using molecular dynamics simulations. This time frame is longer than the time required to reach the diffusive regime. We find that dispersity in this range does not affect the entanglement time or tube diameter. However, while there is negligible difference in the average mobility of chains for the uniform distribution Crossed D signM=1.0 and Crossed D signM=1.02, the shortest chains move significantly faster than the longest ones offering a constraint release pathway for the melts for larger Crossed D signM.
Polymers confined to the liquid/vapor interface are studied using molecular dynamics simulations. We show that for polymers which are weakly immiscible with the solvent, the density profile perpendicular to the liquid/vapor interface is strongly asymmetric. On the vapor side of the interface, the density distribution falls off as a Gaussian with a decay length on the order of the bead diameter, whereas on the liquid side, the density profile decays as a simple exponential. This result differs from that of a polymer absorbed from a good solvent with the density profile decaying as a power law. As the surface coverage increases, the average end-to-end distance and chain mobility systematically decreases toward that of the homopolymer melt.
The distinctive viscoelastic behavior of polymers results from a coupled interplay of motion on multiple length and time scales. Capturing the broad time and length scales of polymer motion remains a challenge. Using polyethylene (PE) as a model macromolecule, we construct coarse-grained (CG) models of PE with three to six methyl groups per CG bead and probe two critical aspects of the technique: pressure corrections required after iterative Boltzmann inversion (IBI) to generate CG potentials that match the pressure of reference fully atomistic melt simulations and the transferability of CG potentials across temperatures. While IBI produces nonbonded pair potentials that give excellent agreement between the atomistic and CG pair correlation functions, the resulting pressure for the CG models is large compared with the pressure of the atomistic system. We find that correcting the potential to match the reference pressure leads to nonbonded interactions with much deeper minima and slightly smaller effective bead diameter. However, simulations with potentials generated by IBI and pressure-corrected IBI result in similar mean-square displacements (MSDs) and stress autocorrelation functions G(t) for PE melts. While the time rescaling factor required to match CG and atomistic models is the same for pressure-and non-pressure-corrected CG models, it strongly depends on temperature. Transferability was investigated by comparing the MSDs and stress autocorrelation functions for potentials developed at different temperatures.
Polymer dynamics creates distinctive viscoelastic behavior as a result of a coupled interplay of motion at the atomic length scale and motion of the entire macromolecule. Capturing the broad time and length scales of polymeric motion however, remains a challenge. Using linear polyethylene as a model system, we probe the effects of the degree of coarse graining on polymer dynamics. Coarse-grained (CG) potentials are derived using iterative Boltzmann inversion with λ methylene groups per CG bead (denoted CGλ) with λ = 2,3,4 and 6 from a fully-atomistic polyethylene melt simulation. By rescaling time in the CG models by a factor α, the chain mobility for the atomistic and CG models match. We show that independent of the degree of coarse graining, all measured static and dynamic properties are essentially the same once the dynamic scaling factor α and a non-crossing constraint for the CG6 model are included. The speedup of the CG4 model is about 3 times that of the CG3 model and is comparable to that of the CG6 model. Furthermore, using these CG models we were able to reach times of over 500 μs, allowing us to measure a number of quantities, including the stress relaxation function, plateau modulus and shear viscosity, and compare directly to experiment.