Molecular dynamics study of a polymer chain in solution

Abstract

The behavior of a polymer chain in solution has been simulated by means of molecular dynamics techniques. The polymer itself is represented by a freely linked chain of hard spheres and the solvent by a hard sphere fluid. Both the equilibrium configurational properties of chains of various lengths and their time‐dependent autocorrelation functions are studied. The equilibrium behavior agrees with the results of previous work. The decay of the autocorrelation functions is exponential over a considerable range and the relaxation times, thus defined, appear to scale with the chain length. The effect of the solvent density is also examined.