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Faraday Discussions

Discussion summary and research papers, in physical chemistry, chemical physics and biophysical chemistry.



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Paper

Faraday Discuss., 2010, 144, 25 - 42, DOI: 10.1039/b902363a


Fine-graining without coarse-graining: an easy and fast way to equilibrate dense polymer melts

Paola Carbone, Hossein Ali Karimi-Varzaneh and Florian Müller-Plathe


A technique to prepare well-equilibrated polymer melts is presented. The method, named fine-graining, consists of two steps: the generation of continuum random walks characterized by different Kuhn lengths and the insertion of the atomistic units on the parent random walk chains. The procedure ensures a good equilibration at long as well as short length-scales and it is very easy to implement. Melts of polyethylene, atactic polystyrene and polyamide-66 are equilibrated with this technique and their long and short range structural properties can be successfully compared with previous simulation and experimental data.