Study of Polymer-Solvent Interactions of Complex Polysiloxanes Using Dissipative Particle Dynamics

The mesoscopic modeling of three polysiloxanes in solution is reported in this work, with the purpose of predicting their physicochemical properties as functions of the quality of the solvent, so that a judicious choice of polymer/solvent can be made for various applications. The polymers studied were the following polysiloxanes: polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), polysiloxane with a bulky alkyl side group (PMHS) and a siloxane copolymer with a hydrophilic polar side group (P2DMPAS). The model used and solved through numerical simulations is the one known as dissipative particle dynamics. Density profiles and radial distribution functions were calculated for each system. We analyzed how the polymers behave in the presence of solvents of varying quality and compared their behavior with experimental data. We observed that we could replicate the behavior in good solvents for PDMS and PMHS. We also observed in the simulation box the formation of pseudo-micelles for P2DMPAS.