Chameleon: A generalized, connectivity altering software for tackling properties of realistic polymer systems

Chameleon, a generalized Monte Carlo software for the phase space analysis of complex, realistic polymer systems is presented. Chameleon implements the so‐called connectivity altering technique applied on polymer chains through Monte Carlo moves that do not mimic actual dynamics. These moves enable an accurate and fast sampling of configuration space and produce a robust environment for the prediction of the polymer's properties. Chameleon's capabilities are presented through a series of computations on well‐studied systems, namely polyethylene (PE), polystyrene (PS) and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) in the melt state. PE, PS and PVC are described via a united atom, coarse grained and all atom representation, respectively. The computed structural and volumetric properties of these systems are compared to experimental data and previous computational works, and found to be in excellent agreement. Finally, the shared memory parallel capabilities of Chameleon are presented and quantified in terms of speedup. This article is categorized under: Software > Simulation Methods Structure and Mechanism > Computational Materials Science Theoretical and Physical Chemistry > Statistical Mechanics Chameleon is a generalized Monte Carlo software for predicting the properties of realistic polymer systems. The central advantage of Chameleon lies in the so‐called connectivity altering moves, which can efficiently explore the configuration space even when other methods—such as molecular dynamics—fail, that is, in dense systems and at low temperatures.