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This work presents a multiscale computational approach to probe the behavior of polymer/clay nanocomposites based on poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO)/montmorillonite (MMT) as obtained from water intercalation. In details, our modeling recipe is based on four sequential steps: (a) atomistic molecular dynamics simulations to derive interaction energy values among all system components; (b) mapping of these values onto mesoscale dissipative particle dynamics parameters; (c) mesoscopic simulations to determine system density distributions and morphologies (i.e., intercalated vs exfoliated); (d) simulations at finite-element levels to calculate the relative macroscopic properties. The entire computational procedure has been applied to four PEO/MMT systems with PEO chains of different molecular weight (750, 1100, 2000, and 5000), and thermal and electrical characteristics were predicted in excellent agreement with the available experimental data. Importantly, our methodology constitutes a truly integrated multiscale modeling approach, in which no “learning against experiment” has been performed in any step of the computational recipe.

Multiscale molecular modeling (MsM) techniques are applied in many fields of material science, but it is particularly important in the polymer field, due to the wide range of phenomena occurring at different scales which influence the ultimate properties of the materials. In this context, MsM plays a crucial role in the design of new materials whose properties are influenced by the structure at nanoscale. In this work we present the application of a multiscale molecular modeling procedure to characterize a different set of polymer-based nanocomposites (PNCs) obtained with full/partial dispersion of different nanofillers in different polymeric matrices. This approach relies on a step-by step message-passing technique from atomistic to mesoscale to finite element level, and the calculated results are compared to available experimental evidences. In details, 13 PNC systems have been studied by different molecular modeling methods, such as atomistic Molecular Mechanics and Molecular Dynamics, mesoscale Dissipative Particles Dynamics, and macroscale Finite Element Method, and their mechanical, thermal and barrier properties have been predicted in agreement with the available experimental data