Computational studies of intermolecular interactions in aqueous solutions of poly(vinylmethylether)

Abstract

Thermo-responsive materials, such as poly(vinylmethylether) (PVME), attract a common attention because of their unique physical properties resulted from metastable equilibrium between various types of interactions. In this work Monte Carlo (MC) and quantum-mechanical (QM) methods were used to study excluded volume and electrostatic interactions respectively. The graining procedure of PVME-water system was proposed. Its implementation to MC calculations allowed to distinguish how two water fractions differ on dynamics. The QM calculations showed that the formation of cyclic clusters leads to the lengthening of the hydrogen bonds and consequently to higher energies in comparison to linear forms, which is crucial looking at an application of QM results to MC calculation considering thermal interactions.