Fast, Faithful Simulations of Donor-Acceptor Interface Morphology

Autor: Puja Agarwala, Enrique D. Gomez, Scott T. Milner
Rok vydání: 2022
Předmět:
Zdroj: Journal of chemical theory and computation. 18(11)
ISSN: 1549-9626
Popis: The local structure of conjugated polymers governs key optoelectronic properties, such as charge conduction and photogeneration at donor-acceptor interfaces. Because conjugated polymers are large, stiff, and relax slowly, all-atom molecular dynamics simulations are computationally expensive. Here, we describe a coarse-graining method that exploits the stiffness of constituent aromatic moieties by representing each moiety as rigidly bonded clusters of atoms wherein virtual sites replace several atoms. This approach significantly reduces the degrees of freedom while faithfully representing the shape and interactions of the moieties, resulting in 10 times faster simulations than all-atom simulations. Simulation of a donor polymer (P3HT) and a non-fullerene acceptor (O-IDTBR) validates the coarse-graining method by comparing structural properties from experiments, such as the density and persistence length. The fast simulation produces equilibrated systems with realistic morphologies. The simulation results of an equimolar mixture of P3HT, with a molecular weight of 1332 g mol
Databáze: OpenAIRE