Spreading Dynamics of Polymer Nanodroplets

Abstract

The spreading of polymer droplets is studied using molecular dynamics simulations. To study the dynamics of both the precursor foot and the bulk droplet, large drops of ~200,000 monomers are simulated using a bead-spring model for polymers of chain length 10, 20, and 40 monomers per chain. We compare spreading on flat and atomistic surfaces, chain length effects, and different applications of the Langevin and dissipative particle dynamics thermostats. We find diffusive behavior for the precursor foot and good agreement with the molecular kinetic model of droplet spreading using both flat and atomistic surfaces. Despite the large system size and long simulation time relative to previous simulations, we find no evidence of hydrodynamic behavior in the spreading droplet.

Physical Review E 11 pages 10 figures

References in corpus (2)

• Capillary Waves at Liquid/Vapor Interfaces: A Molecular Dynamics Simulation
• Friction in a solid lubricant film

Cited by in corpus (9)

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• Spreading of aqueous droplets with common and superspreading surfactants. A molecular dynamics study
• Wetting properties of structured interfaces composed of surface-attached spherical nanoparticles
• Molecular dynamics simulation study of a polymer droplet transport over an array of spherical nanoparticles