Advanced Computer Simulation Approaches For Soft Matter Sciences Ii

This series presents critical reviews of the present and future trends in polymer and biopolymer science including chemistry, physical chemistry, physics and materials science. It is addressed to all scientists at universities and in industry who wish to keep abreast of advances in the topics covered. Impact Factor Ranking: Always number one in Polymer Science. More information as well as the electronic version of the whole content available at: www.springerlink.com

“Soft matter” is nowadays used to describe an increasingly important class of - terials that encompasses polymers, liquid crystals, molecular assemblies building hierarchical structures, organic-inorganic hybrids, and the whole area of colloidal science. Common to all is that ?uctuations, and thus the thermal energy k T and B entropy, play an important role. “Soft” then means that these materials are in a state of matter that is neither a simple liquid nor a hard solid of the type studied in hard condensed matter, hence sometimes many types of soft matter are also named “c- plex ?uids. ” Soft matter, either of synthetic or biological origin, has been a subject of physical and chemical research since the early ?nding of Staudinger that long chain mo- cules exist. From then on, synthetic chemistry as well as physical characterization underwent an enormous development. One of the outcomes is the abundant pr- ence of polymeric materials in our everyday life. Nowadays, methods developed for synthetic polymers are being more and more applied to biological soft matter. The link between modern biophysics and soft matter physics is quite close in many respects. This also means that the focus of research has moved from simple - mopolymers to more complex structures, such as branched objects, heteropolymers (random copolymers, proteins), polyelectrolytes, amphiphiles and so on.

“Soft matter” is nowadays used to describe an increasingly important class of - terials that encompasses polymers, liquid crystals, molecular assemblies building hierarchical structures, organic-inorganic hybrids, and the whole area of colloidal science. Common to all is that ?uctuations, and thus the thermal energy k T and B entropy, play an important role. “Soft” then means that these materials are in a state of matter that is neither a simple liquid nor a hard solid of the type studied in hard condensed matter, hence sometimes many types of soft matter are also named “c- plex ?uids. ” Soft matter, either of synthetic or biological origin, has been a subject of physical and chemical research since the early ?nding of Staudinger that long chain mo- cules exist. From then on, synthetic chemistry as well as physical characterization underwent an enormous development. One of the outcomes is the abundant pr- ence of polymeric materials in our everyday life. Nowadays, methods developed for synthetic polymers are being more and more applied to biological soft matter. The link between modern biophysics and soft matter physics is quite close in many respects. This also means that the focus of research has moved from simple - mopolymers to more complex structures, such as branched objects, heteropolymers (random copolymers, proteins), polyelectrolytes, amphiphiles and so on.

Soft matter science is nowadays an acronym for an increasingly important class of materials, which ranges from polymers, liquid crystals, colloids up to complex macromolecular assemblies, covering sizes from the nanoscale up the microscale. Computer simulations have proven as an indispensable, if not the most powerful, tool to understand properties of these materials and link theoretical models to experiments. In this first volume of a small series recognized leaders of the field review advanced topics and provide critical insight into the state-of-the-art methods and scientific questions of this lively domain of soft condensed matter research.

This extensive and comprehensive collection of lectures by world-leading experts in the field introduces and reviews all relevant computer simulation methods and their applications in condensed matter systems. Volume 2 offers surveys on numerical experiments carried out for a great number of systems, ranging from materials sciences to chemical biology, including supercooled liquids, spin glasses, colloids, polymers, liquid crystals, biological membranes and folding proteins.

Soft matter and biological systems pose many challenges for theoretical, experimental and computational research. From the computational point of view, these many-body sytems cover variations in relevant time and length scales over many orders of magnitude. Indeed, the macroscopic properties of materials and complex fluids are ultimately to be deduced from the dynamics of the microsopic, molecular level. In these lectures, internationally renowned experts offer a tutorial presentation of novel approaches for bridging these space and time scales in realistic simulations. This volume addresses graduate students and nonspecialist researchers from related areas seeking a high-level but accessible introduction to the state of the art in soft matter simulations.

This comprehensive collection of lectures by leading experts in the field introduces and reviews all relevant computer simulation methods and their applications in condensed matter systems. Volume 1 is an in-depth introduction to a vast spectrum of computational techniques for statistical mechanical systems of condensed matter. Volume 2 is a collection of state-of-the-art surveys on numerical experiments carried out for a great number of systems.

This book contains short and concise reports on physics and chemistry of polymers, each written by the world renowned experts. The book has the highest Impact Factor of all journals ranked by ISI within Polymer Science.