Multiscale Computer Simulation Studies of Water-Based Montmorillonite/Poly(ethylene oxide) Nanocomposites

Autor: Paola Posocco, DJ Voorn, Maurizio Fermeglia, Jan-Willem Handgraaf, Radovan Toth, Sabrina Pricl, Johannes G. E. M. Fraaije
Rok vydání: 2009
Předmět:
Zdroj: Macromolecules. 42:8260-8270
ISSN: 1520-5835
0024-9297
DOI: 10.1021/ma901584w
Popis: This work presents a multiscale computational approach to probe the behavior of polymer/clay nanocomposites based on poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO)/montmorillonite (MMT) as obtained from water intercalation. In details, our modeling recipe is based on four sequential steps: (a) atomistic molecular dynamics simulations to derive interaction energy values among all system components; (b) mapping of these values onto mesoscale dissipative particle dynamics parameters; (c) mesoscopic simulations to determine system density distributions and morphologies (i.e., intercalated vs exfoliated); (d) simulations at finite-element levels to calculate the relative macroscopic properties. The entire computational procedure has been applied to four PEO/MMT systems with PEO chains of different molecular weight (750, 1100, 2000, and 5000), and thermal and electrical characteristics were predicted in excellent agreement with the available experimental data. Importantly, our methodology constitutes a truly integrated multiscale ...
Databáze: OpenAIRE