Parametrization of the Gay–Berne potential for conjugated oligomer with a high aspect ratio

Abstract

The Gay-Berne (GB) potential has been a popular semiempirical model for describing the short-range intermolecular forces for a wide variety of aspherical molecules, including liquid crystals and anisotropic colloids, with generally small molecular dimensions and low aspect ratios (<5). This study evaluates the parametrization of the GB potential for a high-aspect-ratio (=10) oligomer belonging to a model conjugated polymer. We elaborate that the semiflexibility associated with a large oligomer species demands a variant umbrella-sampling scheme in establishing the potentials of mean force (PMFs) for four pair ellipsoid arrangements typically utilized to parametrize the GB potential. The model ellipsoid so constructed is shown to capture the PMFs of essential intermediate arrangements as well, and, according to the results of simplex optimizations, recommendations are given for the minimum set of parameters to be included in the optimization of a large oligomer or particulate species. To further attest the parametrized GB potential, the coarse-grained (CG) Monte Carlo simulations employing the GB potential and the back-mapped, full-atom atomistic molecular dynamics (AMD) simulations were performed for a dense oligomer system at two representative system temperatures. The results indicated that the CG simulations can capture, with exceptional computational efficiency, the AMD predictions with good thermal transferability. In future perspectives, we remark on potential applications to construct efficient, parameter-free CG models for capturing fundamental material properties of large oligomer/particulate species as well as long-chain conjugated polymers.