Dissertation Defense
- Title
- Tomas Koci Defends his Dissertation
- Guest Speaker
- Tomas Koci
- Guest Affiliation
- UGA Physics and Astronomy
- Guest Affiliation Url
- https://www.physast.uga.edu
- Host
- Michael Bachmann
- When
- Friday, July 22, 2016 11:00 am - 12:00 pm
- Location
- Room 322, Physics Building
- Details
- Fundamental understanding of structure forming processes in the context of mesoscopic polymer systems is relevant for a number of technological and biomedical applications. In this thesis, extensive simulations of coarse-grained off-lattice polymer models are performed using advanced generalized-ensemble Monte Carlo methods. Microcanonical inflection-point analysis and structural order parameters are used to systematically examine the effects of bond confinement and short-range repulsion on the structural macrostates and transitions of elastic homopolymer chains. The effectiveness of the inflection-point analysis is also demonstrated in a detailed study of polymer aggregation. It is shown that in finite systems, the aggregation transition is a first-order process consisting of a sequence of substransitions between intermediate structural phases.