8th Liquid Matter Conference September 6-10, 2011 Wien, Austria ...

Fri 911:10-14:00P4.17Large amphiphilic dendrimers: internal structure andeffective pair interactionsIoannis Georgiou, 1 Labrini Athanasopoulou, 2 Primoz Ziherl, 3 and Gerhard Kahl 41 Institute for Theoretical Physics, Vienna University of Technology, Wiedner Hauptstrasse8-10, 1040, Vienna, Austria2 Jozef Stefan Institute, Ljubljana, Slovenia3 Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia4 Institute for Theoretical Physics and CMS, Vienna University of Technology, Vienna,AustriaAmong the various self-organized supramolecular systems, dendrimers have long been recognizedfor their ability to condense into a range of crystalline, quasicrystalline, and liquid-crystallinephases. How these phases are formed depends on the details of the internal dendrimer structure andon their effective interactions both on pair and many-body levels. Using Monte Carlo simulations,we study the internal structure of an isolated dendrimer. In our monomer-resolved model, thecovalently bonded monomers interact with a FENE potential and the interaction of the non-bondedmonomers is of the Morse type. In large dendrimers, we observe a clear shell-like structure ofthe inner generations of monomers whereas the terminal generations partially fold back so as torepopulate the core of the dendrimer. The structure of small dendrimers is less distinct. We alsostudy the effective pair interaction of such dendrimers for several dendrimer generations, and weexplore the conformation and the deformation of the overall shape of two interacting dendrimers,seeking the interpretation of the observed shape deformation in terms of the classical theory ofelasticity.17