Coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulation of polymers: Structures and dynamics

Abstract

For the simulations of polymeric systems, coarse-grained (CG) molecular dynamics simulations are computationally demanding not only because of their high computational efficiency, but also these CG models can provide sufficient structural and dynamical properties at both micro- and meso-scopic levels. During the past decades, developments of these CG models are roughly in two directions, that is, generic and chemically system-specific models. The developme of the formmer focuses on the capability of the model to capature the general properties of the system, for instance, scaling relations between both structural and dynamic properties with respect to chain length. On the other hand, to bridging the gap between physics and chemistry, chemically-specifi models are also widely developed which are able to retain the inherent chemical–physical properties for a given polymer system. However, due to the reduction of atomistic degree of freedom a faithful reproduction of structure and especialy dynamics properties of the system is the maijor challenge. In this review, after a brief introduction of some widely used generic models, we present an overview of both recent achievements and remainning challendges in the development of chemically-specific CG approaches, for the simulations of polymer systems.

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