(97j) Simulation of Linear - Dendritic Copolymers

In these rapidly growing technological times we live in, scientists are discovering new ways to use drugs to target diseases in the human body. One way to do this is through dendrimer research. Dendrimers are versatile, derivatizable, well-defined, compartmentalized synthetic polymers with sizes and physicochemical properties resembling those of biomolecules. Dendrimers maybe used as drugs for antiviral treatment and drug delivery devices. The goal of this research project is to use the Large ? scale Atomic/Molecular Massively Parallel Simulator (LAMMPS) to simulate dendritic copolymer chains based on previous work by the Frechet group (Gillies, et al., Stimuli-Responsive Supramolecular Assemblies of Linear Dendritic Copolymers, J. Am. Chem. Soc. 126, 11936, 2004.). The simulations will produce results that will be compared with the experimental work to examine if this is an appropriate, and perhaps faster, approach to study the behavior of dendritic copolymer chains.