Dresden 2009 – scientific programme

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CPP: Fachverband Chemische Physik und Polymerphysik

CPP 13: POSTERS Polymer Physics

CPP 13.22: Poster

Tuesday, March 24, 2009, 14:00–16:30, P3

MD Simulations of Sheared Polymer Brushes with Explicit Solvent — •Andre Galuschko, Torsten Kreer, and Jörg Baschnagel — Institut Charles Sadron CNRS, 23, rue du Loess, 67034 Strasbourg Cedex 2, France

Polymer brushes play an important role as lubricants in many technical applications, e.g. in hard disk drives or artificial joints[1]. They are furthermore believed to be crucial for minimizing friction between synovial joints[2], such as human knees or hips.
Using Molecular Dynamics simulations of a standard coarse grained model we study the lubrication properties of short chain polymer brushes. We extend further approaches (see, e.g.[3,4,5]), which have been performed without explicit solvent, to new simulations, where we now account for hydrodynamic interactions via including solvent molecules. We investigate the static properties of compressed brushes, and study the response of these systems to stationary and non-stationary external shear. This is done under variation of the molecular parameters, i.e. grafting density and chain length.
We compare our simulation results with the same model without explicit solvent. [1] T. Moro, Y. Takatori, K. Ishihara, et al., Nat. Mater. 3, 829 (2004). [2] J. Klein, Proc. IMechE J 220, 691 (2006). [3] G.S. Grest, Phys. Rev. Lett. 76, 4979 (1996). [4] P.S. Doyle, E.S.G. Shaqfeh, A.P. Gast, Phys. Rev. Lett. 78, 1182 (1997). [5] T. Kreer, M.H. Müser, K. Binder, J. Klein, Langmuir 17, 7804 (2001).