Disordered, polydisperse and defect-free polymer networks (with a dash of nanoparticles)

by Valerio Sorichetti (University of Montpellier)

Wednesday 11 Dec 2019, 16:15 → 17:45 Europe/Rome

Aula 4 (Dip. di Fisica - edificio E. Fermi)

Polymer networks are ubiquitous in synthetic and biological systems, from hydrogels to the actin network in cells. We present a method to generate in silico polymer networks which are defect-free, polydisperse and disordered, and show that their dynamic properties are in agreement with the tube model. We also show that the entanglement length can be tuned by changing the initial density, whereas the mean strand length is independent of density. We also explore the properties of spherical nanoparticles embedded the network: whereas small nanoparticles can freely diffuse though the mesh, large nanoparticles are transiently trapped and can only move through a series of sudden “jumps”.