Evaluation of internal structure and morphology of poly(benzyl ether) dendrimers by molecular dynamics simulations

Abstract

We performed molecular dynamics (MD) simulations at 300 K on a series of poly(benzyl ether) (PBE) dendrimers having a different core functionalities. We used the rotational isomeric state Metropolis Monte Carlo (RMMC) method to construct the initial configuration in a periodic boundary cell (PBC) before the MD simulations were undertaken. To elucidate the effects that the structural features have on the chain dimension, the overall internal structure, and the morphology, we monitored the radii of gyration,Rg, and the conformational changes during the simulations. The PBE dendrimers in a glassy state adopted less-extended structures when compared with the conformations obtained from the RMMC calculations. We found thatRg of the PBE dendrimer depends on the molecular weight,M, according to the relation,R g ∼M 0.22. The radial distributions of the dendrimers were developed identically in the PBC, irrespective of the core functionality. A gradual decrease in radial density resulted from the fact that the terminal branch ends are distributed all over the molecule, except for the core region.