Abstract
Structure and Dynamics of dilute two-dimensional (2D) ring polymer solutions are investigated by using discontinuous molecular dynamics simulations. A ring polymer and solvent molecules are modeled as a tangent-hard disc chain and hard discs, respectively. Some of solvent molecules are confined inside the 2D ring polymer unlike in 2D linear polymer solutions or three-dimensional polymer solutions. The structure and the dynamics of the 2D ring polymers change significantly with the number ($N_{in}$) of such solvent molecules inside the 2D ring polymers. The mean-squared radius of gyration ($R^2$) increases with $N_{in}$ and scales as $R{\sim}N^{\nu}$ with the scaling exponent $\nu$ that depends on $N_{in}$. When $N_{in}$ is large enough, ${\nu}{\approx}1$, which is consistent with experiments. Meanwhile, for a small $N_{in}{\approx}0.66$ and the 2D ring polymers show unexpected structure. The diffusion coefficient (D) and the rotational relaxation time ($\tau_{rot}$) are also sensitive to $N_{in}$: D decreases and $\tau$ increases sharply with $N_{in}$. D of 2D ring polymers shows a strong size-dependency, i.e., D ~ ln(L), where L is the simulation cell dimension. But the rotational diffusion and its relaxation time ($\tau_{rot}$) are not-size dependent. More interestingly, the scaling behavior of $\tau_{rot}$ also changes with $N_{in}$; for a large $N_{in}$ $\tau_{rot}{\sim}N^{2.46}$ but for a small $N_{in}$ $\tau_{rot}{\sim}N^{1.43}$.