Topology effects on associative polymers

Work by John Bracewell and colleagues at the University of South Carolina and Gary Grest at Sandia National Laboratories.

Tailoring the topology of associative polymers offers a means to control macromolecular responses, enabling the design of new responsive soft materials. This study probes the conformation and response of ring associative polymers compared with their entangled linear analogues, using MD simulations of a coarse-grained bead-spring model. Ring polymers have no free chain ends, resulting in considerably faster dynamics than their linear analogs, while the associative groups drive assembly that constrains the polymer motion.