Coarse-Grained Models for Aqueous Polyethylene Glycol Solutions

A new coarse-grained force field is developed for polyethylene glycol (PEG) in water. The force field is based on the MARTINI model but with the big multipole water (BMW) model for the solvent. The polymer force field is reparameterized using the MARTINI protocol. The new force field removes the ring-like conformations seen in simulations of short chains with the MARTINI force field; these conformations are not observed in atomistic simulations. We also investigate the effect of using parameters for the end-group that are different from those for the repeat units, with the MARTINI and BMW/MARTINI models. We find that the new BMW/MARTINI force field removes the ring-like conformations seen in the MARTINI models and has more accurate predictions for the density of neat PEG. However, solvent-separated-pairs between chain ends and slow dynamics of the PEG reflect its own artifacts. We also carry out fine-grained simulations of PEG with bundled water clusters and show that the water bundling can lead to ring-like conformations of the polymer molecules. The simulations emphasize the pitfalls of coarse-graining several molecules into one site and suggest that polymer solvent systems might be a stringent test for coarse-grained force fields.