Can dendrimers be viewed as compact colloids? A simulation study of the fluctuations in a dendrimer of fourth generation

By employing monomer-resolved Monte Carlo simulations, we analyze the conformations, density distributions, correlation functions, and the form factor of model dendrimers of fourth generation. We find that these objects are hybrids between polymer chains and compact colloidal particles, with the fluctuations of the monomers being correlated at length scales of the order of the bond length but practically uncorrelated for lengths exceeding this scale. We discuss the implications of this finding on the possibility of regarding dendrimers as "soft colloids," on the detection of these fluctuations in scattering experiments and on the inversion of intensity profiles obtained in small-angle neutron scattering measurements. (C) 2003 American Institute of Physics.