ABSTRACT
For many materials, it is difficult to span the wide range of scales of length and time from the atomistic description to that of macroscopic phenomena. For polymers, this “multiscale problem” is particularly severe, since a single flexible macromolecule already exhibits structure on many length scales (Fig. 1), and is a slowly relaxing object [1, 2]. In addition, one often wishes to consider systems with multiple constituents (concentrated polymer solutions or blends, mixtures of homopolymers and block copolymers or polymers of different architecture) which exist in several phases, and then the scales of length and time that are of physical interest truly extend from the subatomic scale (relevant for the electronic structure of polymers, their chemical reactions, excited states, etc.) to the macroscopic scale (e.g., phase separated domains of the scale of micrometers or larger, glassy relaxation on the scale of seconds or hours, etc.) [3].
