Abstract:
Star-shaped polymers, consisting of a core and a number of arms radiating from the core, have
attracted more attention because of their highly branched structures and unique rheological
properties. Star-shaped polymers' unique shape and associated properties such as their compact
structure, high arm density, efficient synthetic routes, and unique rheological properties make them
promising tools for use in drug delivery, other biomedical applications, thermoplastics, and
nanoelectronics among other applications. In this study, the effects of attractive potential on the
structure of model single star diblock copolymer using Monte Carlo simulation method have been
studied. A coarse grain strategy is adopted for the development of computational tractable models
which take explicitly into account the specific architecture and the extended flexibility. Particularly
the effect of attractive potential, arm length, number of arms, and temperature has been
investigated; and investigate the significant of attractive potential effect on the structural properties
(size, shape, distribution of inner monomers and outer monomers) of a star diblock copolymer.
The attractive potential is found to have an effect on the radius of gyration (size), the shape
parameters (asphericitiy, acylindricity and shape anisotropy) and packing fraction derived from
the eigenvalues of gyration tensor.
Keywords: star shaped polymer, single star diblock copolymer, Monte Carlo Simulation, Coarse
grained model.