Assessing the anomalous superdiffusive heat transport in a single one-dimensional PEDOT chain

We present a computational investigation on heat transport in a single polymer chain of poly-3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene (PEDOT). By applying equilibrium and nonequilibrium molecular dynamics simulations to evaluate the thermal conductivity, as well as by investigating how the polymer chain approaches equilibrium upon a local thermal excitation, we provide a robust picture assessing the anomalous superdiffusive (i.e., intermediate between ballistic and diffusive) character of its thermal transport. This assessment is provided by the present simulations showing that three scaling laws with unlike physical meaning and characterizing the thermal energy transport in one-dimensional systems indeed occur in the very same polymer chain with consistent critical exponents. In order to disentangle the effect of dimensionality, we perform a systematic comparison of transport features for a single one-dimensional (1D) PEDOT chain and a three-dimensional (3D) PEDOT crystal. Present simulations suggest that by increasing the dimensionality, the anomalous regime is completely removed as due to the occurrence of strong interchains anharmonic interactions. Finally, we prove that thermal transport in isolated single PEDOT chains belongs to a novel universality class of superdiffusion characterized by a critical exponent beta = 1/2.