Publications

We report classical atomistic molecular dynamics simulations of alkanethiol-coated gold nanoparticles solvated in water and decane, as well as at water/vapor interfaces. The structure of the coatings is analyzed as a function of various functional end groups, including amine and carboxyl groups in various ionization states. We study both neutral and charged end groups for two different chain lengths (9 and 17 carbons). For the charged end groups, we simulated both mono- and divalent counterions. For the longer alkanes, we find significant local bundling of chains on the nanoparticle surface, which results in highly asymmetric coatings. In general, the charged end groups attenuate this effect by enhancing the water solubility of the nanoparticles. On the basis of the coating structures and density profiles, we can qualitatively infer the overall solubility of the nanoparticles. This asymmetry in the alkanethiol coatings is likely to have a significant effect on aggregation behavior. Our simulations elucidate the mechanism by which modulating the end group charge state can be used to control coating structure and therefore nanoparticle solubility and aggregation behavior.

We use molecular dynamics simulations of the Kremer–Grest (KG) bead–spring model of polymer chains of length between 10 and 500, and a closely related analogue that allows for chain crossing, to clearly delineate the effects of entanglements on the length-scale-dependent chain relaxation in polymer melts. We analyze the resulting trajectories using the Rouse modes of the chains and find that entanglements strongly affect these modes. The relaxation rates of the chains show two limiting effective monomeric frictions, with the local modes experiencing much lower effective friction than the longer modes. The monomeric relaxation rates of longer modes vary approximately inversely with chain length due to kinetic confinement effects. The time-dependent relaxation of Rouse modes has a stretched exponential character with a minimum of stretching exponent in the vicinity of the entanglement chain length. None of these trends are found in models that allow for chain crossing. As a result, these facts, in combination, argue for the confined motion of chains for time scales between the entanglement time and their ultimate free diffusion.

We present a review and critique of several methods for the simulation of the dynamics of colloidal suspensions at the mesoscale. We focus particularly on simulation techniques for hydrodynamic interactions, including implicit solvents (Fast Lubrication Dynamics, an approximation to Stokesian Dynamics) and explicit/particle-based solvents (Multi-Particle Collision Dynamics and Dissipative Particle Dynamics). Several variants of each method are compared quantitatively for the canonical system of monodisperse hard spheres, with a particular focus on diffusion characteristics, as well as shear rheology and microstructure. In all cases, we attempt to match the relevant properties of a well-characterized solvent, which turns out to be challenging for the explicit solvent models. Reasonable quantitative agreement is observed among all methods, but overall the Fast Lubrication Dynamics technique shows the best accuracy and performance. We also devote significant discussion to the extension of these methods to more complex situations of interest in industrial applications, including models for non-Newtonian solvent rheology, non-spherical particles, drying and curing of solvent and flows in complex geometries. This work identifies research challenges and motivates future efforts to develop techniques for quantitative, predictive simulations of industrially relevant colloidal suspension processes.

Self-healing of polymer films often takes place as the molecules diffuse across a damaged region, above their melting temperature. Using molecular dynamics simulations we probe the healing of polymer films and compare the results with those obtained for thermal welding of homopolymer slabs. These two processes differ from each other in their interfacial structure since damage leads to increased polydispersity and more short chains. A polymer sample was cut into two separate films that were then held together in the melt state. The recovery of the damaged film was followed as time elapsed and polymer molecules diffused across the interface. The mass uptake and formation of entanglements, as obtained from primitive path analysis, are extracted and correlated with the interfacial strength obtained from shear simulations. We find that the diffusion across the interface is significantly faster in the damaged film compared to welding because of the presence of short chains. Though interfacial entanglements increase more rapidly for the damaged films, a large fraction of these entanglements are near chain ends. As a result, the interfacial strength of the healing film increases more slowly than for welding. For both healing and welding, the interfacial strength saturates as the bulk entanglement density is recovered across the interface. However, the saturation strength of the damaged film is below the bulk strength for the polymer sample. At saturation, cut chains remain near the healing interface. They are less entangled and as a result they mechanically weaken the interface. Chain stiffness increases the density of entanglements, which increases the strength of the interface. Our results show that a few entanglements across the interface are sufficient to resist interfacial chain pullout and enhance the mechanical strength. © 2014 American Physical Society.

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Hydrocarbon polymers, foams and nanocomposites are increasingly being subjected to extreme environments. Molecular scale modeling of these materials offers insight into failure mechanisms and complex response. Prior classical molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of the principal shock Hugoniot for two hydrocarbon polymers, polyethylene (PE) and poly (4-methyl-1-pentene) (PMP) have shown good agreement with density functional theory (DFT) calculations and experiments conducted at Sandia National Laboratories. We extended these results to include low-density polymer foams using nonequilibrium MD techniques and found good quantitative agreement with experiment. Here, we have measured the local temperature during void collapse to investigate the formation of hot spots and their relationship to polymer dissociation in foams.

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