SIMULATIONS FOR STRUCTURAL AND DYNAMIC PROPERTIES OF DENSE POLYMER SYSTEMS

Recent attempts to investigate the properties of dense and semidilute polymer systems are reviewed. Both molecular dynamics (MD) and Monte Carlo (MC) methods provide direct evidence for the reptation model and give a rather detailed picture of the motion of linear polymers at high density. Mapping the results onto various chemical polymers allow one to predict the time and length scale for the crossover from Rouse to reptation for a variety of polymers. In the free-draining limit one finds that the entanglement length is proportional to the excluded volume screening length of the semidilute solution. Finally, a first attempt to incorporate material-specific properties into a computer model is discussed.