Volumetric behavior of athermal dendritic polymers: Monte Carlo simulation

We present results of Monte Carlo simulations for dilute to concentrated solutions of athermal, homogeneous dendritic polymers. The dendritic polymers are composed of tangent hard-spheres and vary from generation 0 to generation 5. These simulations investigate the effect of hyperbranching on the structure and thermodynamics of polymer solutions. At low concentrations, dendritic polymers systems have a lower pressure than linear polymers of the same molecular weight, owing to the more compact architecture of the dendrimer. In the concentrated polymer regime, solutions containing low-generation dendrimers behave similarly to linear polymers, while those containing high-generation dendrimers have a pressure that increases more rapidly with concentration.