Structural change of damaged polyethylene by beta-decay of substituted tritium using reactive force field

Abstract

Abstract The molecular mechanism of structural change caused by the beta-decay of substituted tritium on DNA or polymeric materials is still being unsolved and it is hard to study the decay effect of tritium solely by experiment. In order to study the structural changes of damaged polyethylene caused by the decay effect of tritium, we randomly removed hydrogen atoms from the polyethylene chain and performed molecular dynamics (MD) simulations using the reactive force field (ReaxFF). We adopted two parameter sets of ReaxFF and evaluated their reliability by comparing the atomic forces with density functional theory calculations. The results of MD simulations at a low temperature of 100 K show that the structure of polyethylene will be less ordered when losing more hydrogen atoms. It is observed that a double bond or a cyclic structure will be formed when two carbon atoms, which are the nearest or next-nearest neighbors, lose hydrogen atoms.