Self-assembly and structural relaxation in a model ionomer melt

Molecular dynamics simulations are used to understand the self-assembly and structural relaxation in ionomer melts containing less than 10% degree of ionization on the backbone. The self-assembly of charged sites and counterions shows structural ordering and agglomeration with a range of structures that can be achieved by changing the dielectric constant of the medium. The intermediate scattering function shows a decoupling of charge and counterion relaxation at longer length scales for only high dielectric constant and at shorter length scales for all dielectric constants. Overall, the slow structural decay of counterions in the strongly correlated ionomer system closely resembles transport properties of semi-flexible polymers.