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Updated: Dec 10, 2025

Multiscale Sampling of a Heterogeneous Water/Metal Catalyst Interface using Density Functional Theory and Force-Field Molecular Dynamics
Published on: April 12, 2019
Monte Carlo simulation of cylinders with short-range attractions
Harold W Hatch1, Nathan A Mahynski1, Ryan P Murphy2
1Chemical Informatics Research Group, Chemical Sciences Division, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, Maryland 20899-8380, USA.
None:
Cylindrical or rod-like particles are promising materials for the applications of fillers in nanocomposite materials and additives to control rheological properties of colloidal suspensions. Recent advances in particle synthesis allows for cylinders to be manufactured with short-ranged attractions to study the gelation as a function of packing fraction, aspect ratio and attraction strength. In order to aid in the analysis of small-angle scattering experiments of rod-like particles, computer simulation methods were used to model these particles with specialized Monte Carlo algorithms and tabular superquadric potentials. The attractive interaction between neighboring rods increases with the amount of locally-accessible surface area, thus leading to patchy-like interactions. We characterize the clustering and percolation of cylinders as the attractive interaction increases from the homogenous fluid at relatively low attraction strength, for a variety of aspect ratios and packing fractions. Comparisons with the experimental scattering results are also presented, which are in agreement.
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