# A coarse-grained polymer model for studying the glass transition

## TL;DR

This paper introduces a new coarse-grained polymer model that effectively simulates the glass transition by capturing key physical behaviors like density changes and chain mobility slowdown, with minimal temperature dependence of chain structure.

## Contribution

A novel coarse-grained polymer model with a new bond bending potential that accurately reproduces glass transition phenomena and allows easy switching between existing models.

## Key findings

- Kuhn length and internal chain distances are weakly temperature-dependent.
- Glass transition characterized by density changes and non-Arrhenius mobility slowdown.
- Model enables fast switching between different polymer simulation models.

## Abstract

To study the cooling behavior and the glass transition of polymer melts in bulk and with free surfaces a coarse-grained weakly semi-flexible polymer model is developed. Based on a standard bead spring model with purely repulsive interactions an attractive potential between non-bonded monomers is added, such that the pressure of polymer melts is tuned to zero. Additionally, the commonly used bond bending potential [Everaers et al., Science 303, 823 (2004)] controlling the chain stiffness is replaced by a new bond bending potential. For this model, we show that the Kuhn length and the internal distances along the chains in the melt only very weakly depend on temperature, just as for typical experimental systems. The glass transition is observed by the temperature dependency of the melt density and the characteristic non-Arrhenius slowing down of the chain mobility. The model is set to allow for a fast switch between models, for which a wealth of data already exists.