title: Coil-to-globule transition by dissipative particle dynamics simulation.
abstract: The dynamics of a collapsing polymer under a temperature quench in dilute solution is investigated by dissipative particles dynamics. Hydrodynamic interactions and many-body interaction are preserved naturally by incorporating explicit solvent particles in this approach. Our simulation suggests a four-stage collapse pathway: localized clusters formation, cluster coarsening in situ, coarsening involving global backbone conformation change into a crumpled globule, and compaction of the globule. For all the quench depths and chain lengths used in our study, collapse proceeds without the chain getting trapped in a metastable "sausage" configuration, as reported in some earlier studies. We obtain the time scales for each of the first three stages, as well as its scaling with the quench depths ξ and chain lengths N. The total collapse time scales as τ(c) ∼ ξ(-0.46 ± 0.04)N(0.98 ± 0.09), with the quench depth and degree of polymerization.
authors: CAS Key Laboratory of Soft Matter Chemistry and Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at Microscale, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui, China.
authors: Jiayi
authors: J
authors: Guo
authors: Haojun
authors: H
authors: Liang
authors: Zhen-Gang
authors: ZG
authors: Wang