Polymer modeling

The modeling of polymers, the most prominent of soft materials, has reached a level of maturity within the last few years, but new advances are being made in several areas of considerable practical importance. New sampling te chniques are being developed to accelerate the exploration of configuration space, which has been and continues to be of paramount importance in the d etermination of the properties of polymeric materials. Simultaneous length and time scale problems are being addressed with new coarse-grained methods , while more traditional methods are being applied to problems of increasin g chemical complexity and reality. These several advances are yielding unpr ecedented insights into the relative importance of intramolecular (manifest ed in long-range polymeric structure) and intermolecular interactions in de termining the properties of materials. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All r ights reserved.