weaker bond strengths, straining the network leads to a rather substantial reduction
in binding and loss of reversible bridges.
Strong-binding stickers are less kinetically active than weak-binding ones. This
result is presented in panel (b) of Fig. 6. For the weakest bond strength examined,
E rev ¼ 6k B T, a bit less than 3% of all reversible cross-link stickers change binding
partners within one Monte Carlo sweep. For the largest binding strength of
E rev ¼ 15k B T, this reduces to less than 0.01%.
Fig. 5 Snapshots of the polymer gel simulation before (a, c) and after (b, d) isotropic strain. In (a)
and (b), blue beads are polymer segments, red beads are reversible cross-links, orange beads are
permanent cross-links, and green beads are stickers. Panels (c) and (d) show only permanent crosslinks from the snapshots in (a) and (b). (Images generated with OVITO [73])
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in binding and loss of reversible bridges.
Strong-binding stickers are less kinetically active than weak-binding ones. This
result is presented in panel (b) of Fig. 6. For the weakest bond strength examined,
E rev ¼ 6k B T, a bit less than 3% of all reversible cross-link stickers change binding
partners within one Monte Carlo sweep. For the largest binding strength of
E rev ¼ 15k B T, this reduces to less than 0.01%.
Fig. 5 Snapshots of the polymer gel simulation before (a, c) and after (b, d) isotropic strain. In (a)
and (b), blue beads are polymer segments, red beads are reversible cross-links, orange beads are
permanent cross-links, and green beads are stickers. Panels (c) and (d) show only permanent crosslinks from the snapshots in (a) and (b). (Images generated with OVITO [73])
100
C. Raffaelli et al.