| I present a dissertation outlining two statistical mechanics investigations I have undertaken, as well as the development of the molecular dynamics simulation package OOPSE. The first investigation was using a random sequential adsorption model to elucidate the adsorption of two related silicon phthalocyanines on a gold (111) surface. OOPSE is a molecular simulation package capable of carrying out high performance parallel molecular dynamics trajectories. Working with colleagues, I developed OOPSE to the point that it was capable of simulating my phospholipid bilayer model. The model is a mesoscale parameterization of phospholipids in order to simulate large systems for long times within a reasonable amount of computational time. Using OOPSE, I have simulated a bilayer over a range of temperatures, and have observed bilayer self-assembly on the 20 ns time scale. |
