Network Structure and Water Absorption of Soil Moisture Gel by Coarse-Grained Molecular Dynamics Simulations

Abstract

With the wide application of hydrogel materials in agriculture, forestry, flexible electronics, electronic information engineering, environmental detection, flexible electronics, information science, technology and so on, the development of various new functional hydrogel materials has gradually become one of the research hotspots. At present, the research on hydrogel materials is mainly focused on the preparation of various functional hydrogels by experimental methods, there is no fundamental understanding of the relationship between the “stimulus-response” and its inner microstructures. In this paper, the author uses the molecular dynamics simulation method to study the evolution of the hydrogel’s microscopic network structure, the relationship between microstructure and water absorption of hydrogels in the processes of water swelling and “stimulus-response”. The next generation of new super absorbent, high toughness, high strength and other functional hydrogels could be synthesized by the guide of this study, and these new hydrogels have a promising future to apply in new fields of technology such as flexible electronics, and biological medicine.