Search results for "Entropy"
showing 10 items of 496 documents
I. Glass Transition. Theoretical concepts on the glass transition of polymers and their test by computer simulation
1996
Various organic molecules, in particular polymers, are extremely good glass formers and allow the study of supercooled melts near the glass transition in metastable equilibrium. Theories of the glass transition imply such an equilibrium (e.g. mode-coupling theory, or Gibbs-di Marzio theory) and can hence be tested in these systems. Simplified lattice models for polymer melts (e.g. the bond fluctuation model) have been developed that can very efficiently be studied by Monte-Carlo simulation, and although they fail to accurately describe the local structure, they describe many features of the experiments very well. In this model, the mechanism of the glass transition is a competition between …
Glass transition of polymer melts: Test of theoretical concepts by computer simulation.
2003
Abstract Polymers are good glass formers and allow for the study of melts near the glass transition in (meta-)stable equilibrium. Theories of the glass transition imply such an equilibrium and can, hence, be tested by the study of polymer melts. After a brief summary of the basic experimental facts about the glass transition in polymers, the main theoretical concepts are reviewed: mode coupling theory (MCT), entropy theory, free-volume theory, the idea of a growing length describing the size of cooperative regions, etc. Then, two basic coarse-grained models of polymers are described, which have been developed aiming at a test of these concepts. The first model is the bond-fluctuation model …
Monte carlo simulation of the glass transition of polymer melts
2007
The bond fluctuation model of polymer melts is presented as a reasonable compromise between simulation efficiency and realistic chemical detail. It is shown that inclusion of a potential energy that depends on the length of the effective bonds connecting the effective monomers easily creates a conflict between configurational entropy of dense packing and the energetic tendency of the bonds to stretch. This competition leads to a glass transition of the model, which very well describes many features of real systems.
Unexpectedly normal phase behavior of single homopolymer chains
2006
Employing Monte Carlo simulations, we show that the topology of the phase diagram of a single flexible homopolymer chain changes in dependence on the range of an attractive square well interaction between the monomers. For a range of attraction larger than a critical value, the equilibrium phase diagram of the single polymer chain and the corresponding polymer solution phase diagram exhibit vapor (swollen coil, dilute solution), liquid (collapsed globule, dense solution), and solid phases. Otherwise, the liquid-vapor transition vanishes from the equilibrium phase diagram for both the single chain and the polymer solution. This change in topology of the phase diagram resembles the behavior k…
Monte Carlo simulations of the polymer glass transition: From the test of theories to material modeling
1997
We present results on the glass transition in polymer melts using Monte Carlo simulations of the bond fluctuation lattice model. There are two questions we address in this work. What is the temperature dependence of the entropy density in such a model polymer melt and how well is it described by theories like the Gibbs-DiMarzio theory of the glass transition? And to what degree is one able to map the Hamiltonian of such an abstract lattice model onto a specific polymer material and use it to model the large scale and long time properties of a realistic polymer melt?
Entropy theory and glass transition: A test by Monte Carlo simulation
1997
This article reviews the results of a test of the Gibbs-DiMarzio theory by Monte Carlo Simulation. The simulation employed the bond-fluctuation model on a simple cubic lattice. This model incorporates two kinds of interactions: the excluded volume interaction among all monomers of the melt and an internal energy of the chains, which favors large bonds and makes the chains stiffen with decreasing temperature. The stiffening of the chains leads to an increase of their volume requirements, which competes with the packing constraints at low temperatures. This competition strongly slows down the structural relaxation of the melt and induces the glassy behavior. The model therefore takes into acc…
On the calculation of free energy of mixing for aqueous polymer solutions with group-contribution models
2010
Abstract Liquid–liquid phase separation processes are currently used as a route to prepare polymeric porous structures for various applications (membranes and scaffolds for tissue engineering). In membrane and foam fabrication technologies, binary and mainly ternary polymer solutions are used. Membrane morphology is strongly affected by phase equilibria of processing solution. In order to achieve a better control of membrane morphology and to explore a wide quantity of solvents, a predictive tool addressing experimentals would be strongly advisable. In this paper, group contribution models were chosen to test the applicability on a PLLA–dioxane–water ternary polymer solution, whose experime…
Interrelation between the thermodynamic and viscometric behaviour of aqueous solutions of hydrophobically modified ethyl hydroxyethyl cellulose
2000
Abstract Aqueous solutions of a commercial sample of hydrophobically modified ethyl hydroxyethyl cellulose (HC, Mw=100 kg/mol, nonylphenol substitution ca. 1.7 mol%) were studied with respect to their demixing behaviour and flow characteristics. Phase separation temperatures were measured turbidimetrically and by determining the first discernible macroscopic phase separation. In some cases demixing was also monitored viscometrically. Phase volume ratios yielded a critical polymer concentration of 1.87 wt.% HC (displaced considerably out of the minimum of the demixing curve towards higher polymer concentrations) and a lower critical solution temperature of 47°C. Model calculations of the spi…
Classification of Complex Molecules
2009
Algorithms for classification and taxonomy based on criteria, e.g., information entropy and its production are proposed. In molecular classification, the feasibility of replacing a given molecule (e.g, anaesthetic) by similar ones in the composition of a complex drug is studied. Some local anaesthetics currently in use are classified using characteristic chemical properties of different portions of their molecules. In taxonomy, the detailed comparison of the sequences (primary structures) of biomolecules, proteins or nucleic acids, allows the reconstruction of a molecular phylogenetic tree for some species, e.g. the 1918 influenza virus. The method is applied to the classifications of: (1) …
Ternary Polymer Solutions with Hydrogen Bonds, 1
2007
The Flory Huggins methodology coupled to AET has been extended to ternary polymer systems, in particular to solvent (A)/polymer 1 (B)/polymer 2 (C) systems, with the two polymers displaying H-bonding interactions. Because the H-bonding can perturb the randomness of polymeric conformations, the change in Gibbs free energy of mixing, AG, should arise from changes in combinatorial entropy as well as in interaction energy. The combinatorial part of AG is evaluated through AET as a function of the association constant η between B and C components, the autoassociation constant a between B components, and the independent number m of interaction sites of acceptor C. The enthalpic contribution is ev…