We use the bond fluctuation model with explicit solvent to study single polymer chains under poor solvent conditions. Static and dynamic properties of the bond fluctuation model with explicit solvent are compared with the implicit solvent model, and the Θ-temperatures are determined for both solvent models. We show that even in the very poor solvent regime, dynamics is not frozen for the explicit solvent model. We investigate some aspects of the structure of a single collapsed globule and show that rather large chain lengths are necessary to reach the scaling regime of a dense sphere. The force-extension curve of a single polymer chain under poor solvent conditions in the fixed end-to-end distance ensemble is analyzed. We find that the transition of the tadpole conformation to the stretched chain conformation is rather smooth because of fluctuation effects, which is in agreement with recent experimental results.

Using a variant of the Bond Fluctuation Model which improves its parallel efficiency in particular running on graphic cards we perform large scale simulations of polymer brushes in poor explicit solvent. Grafting density, solvent quality, and chain length are varied. Different morphological structures in particular octopus micelles are observed for low grafting densities. We reconsider the theoretical model for octopus micelles proposed by Williams using scaling arguments with the relevant scaling variable being σ/σ(c), and with the characteristic grafting density given by σ(c) ~ N(-4/3). We find that octopus micelles only grow laterally, but not in height and we propose an extension of the model by assuming a cylindrical shape instead of a spherical geometry for the micelle-core. We show that the scaling variable σ/σ(c) can be applied to master plots for the averaged height of the brush, the size of the micelles, and the number of chains per micelle. The exponents in the corresponding power law relations for the grafting density and chain length are in agreement with the model for flat cylindrical micelles. We also investigate the surface roughness and find that polymer brushes in explicit poor solvent at grafting densities higher than the stretching transition are flat and surface rippling can only be observed close to the stretching transition.

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