Dynamic properties of decane/water microemulsions decorated with hydrophobically modified PEO Polymer (PEO-C12): A molecular dynamics simulations study

Abstract

This work aims to probe the dynamics of Microemulsions/PEO complexes by using Molecular dynamics simulations (MD). The studied system is a highly diluted O/W charged MEs (Φ = 2.8%), covered by significant amounts of PEO polymer chains, with a short sticky block PEO-C12 (Np = 0, 4, 8, 12, 16, 24 and 32). The employed effective pair potential is a combination of a hard sphere, the van der Waals and a Yukawa type potential. I order to shed light on the dynamic properties of this system, we analyzed the mean-squared displacement (MSD), the diffusion coefficients (Dc) and the velocity autocorrelation function (VACF) as a number Np of added PEO-C12; Increasing the polymer concentration Np slows down the diffusion of the system.