Polymer physics across scales: Modeling the multiscale behavior of functional soft materials and biological systems

Abstract

Polymeric materials are ubiquitous in our daily lives, and they play a significant role in many technological applications. The general predictive framework for the behavior of soft polymeric materials can be divided into two vastly different approaches. Highly coarse-grained models capture polymers as flexible random walks, resulting in general predictions of physical behavior but lack chemical specificity. Detailed atomistic models contain molecular detail but are frequently computationally intractable for exhaustive materials discovery. In this perspective, we discuss theoretical models that successfully bridge these disparate approaches. We identify intermediate-scale physical models that are amenable to theoretical analyses while containing sufficient granular detail to capture a range of molecular-level processes. We then provide several problems in materials engineering and biological physics where multiscale physics is essential in their behavior.