Formation of fibrillar aggregates in concentrated solutions of rigid-chain amphiphilic macromolecules with fixed torsion and bend angles

The molecular-dynamics method is used to study solutions of amphiphilic macromolecules with a local helical structure. A deterioration in the solvent quality in concentrated solutions of these macromolecules leads to the formation of intermolecular fibrillar helix bundles with approximately the same lengths and aggregation numbers. The number of chains in a bundle is determined by parameters that characterize the local structure and is weakly dependent on the length of the macromolecule and the volume fraction of the polymer in the solution. In racemic mixtures of these macromolecules, a deterioration in the solvent quality leads to effective demixing; that is, the resultant fibrillar bundles generally contain macromolecules of exclusively the same chirality.