ABSTRACT

Associative polymers are macromolecules with attractive (or sticky) groups that can form reversible physical bonds, which lead to formation of physical gels and networks. These polymer solutions are used in a variety of products and applications such paints, food thickeners, adhesives, bio-medical implants, and many such more. The reason for their use in such a wide range of applications is because the interactions between the sticky groups can be tuned by varying their number, strength of association and location in a polymer chain, which ultimately modifies the overall properties of the solution. We have developed a coarse-grained Brownian dynamics simulation algorithm to investigate the correlation of the underlying microscopic structure with the dynamics and macroscopic viscoelasticity of these polymer solutions and compared our simulation results with the predictions of scaling theory.