title: Effects of the internal friction and the solvent quality on the dynamics of a polymer chain closure.
abstract: Using 3D Langevin dynamics simulations, we investigate the effects of the internal friction and the solvent quality on the dynamics of a polymer chain closure. We show that the chain closure in good solvents is a purely diffusive process. By extrapolation to zero solvent viscosity, we find that the internal friction of a chain plays a non-ignorable role in the dynamics of the chain closure. When the solvent quality changes from good to poor, the mean closure time τc decreases by about 1 order of magnitude for the chain length 20 ≤ N ≤ 100. Furthermore, τc has a minimum as a function of the solvent quality. With increasing the chain length N, the minimum of τc occurs at a better solvent. Finally, the single exponential distributions of the closure time in poor solvents suggest that the negative excluded volume of segments does not alter the nearly Poisson statistical characteristics of the process of the chain closure.
authors.affiliation: CAS Key Laboratory of Soft Matter Chemistry, Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemistry for Energy Materials, Department of Polymer Science and Engineering, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui Province 230026, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Wancheng
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.affiliation: CAS Key Laboratory of Soft Matter Chemistry, Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemistry for Energy Materials, Department of Polymer Science and Engineering, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui Province 230026, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Kaifu
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Luo
mesh_terms: D003198:Computer Simulation; D004058:Diffusion; D017276:Friction; D007700:Kinetics; D008956:Models, Chemical; D011108:Polymers / Q000737:chemistry*; D012997:Solvents / Q000737:chemistry*; D014783:Viscosity
chemical_list: D011108:Polymers; D012997:Solvents