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Crosslinked polymer chains with excluded volume: A new class of branched polymers?
Author(s) -
Vilgis Thomas A.
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
macromolecular theory and simulations
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.37
H-Index - 56
eISSN - 1521-3919
pISSN - 1022-1344
DOI - 10.1002/(sici)1521-3919(19980101)7:1<59::aid-mats59>3.0.co;2-3
Subject(s) - excluded volume , polymer , scaling , type (biology) , polymer science , scaling law , polymer chemistry , volume (thermodynamics) , computation , gaussian , statistical physics , materials science , thermodynamics , physics , chemistry , mathematics , computational chemistry , composite material , geometry , algorithm , ecology , biology
In this note microgels with and without excluded volume interactions are considered. Based on earlier exact computations on Gaussian mircogels, which are formed by self‐crosslinking (with M crosslinks) of polymer chains with chainlength N , Flory type approximations are used to get first insight to their behavior in solution. It is shown that two different types of microgels exist: A special type of branched polymer whose size scales as R ∝ N 2/5 / M −1/5 , instead of R ∝ N 1/2 . The second type are c * ‐microgels whose average mesh sizes r are swollen and form self avoiding walks with a scaling law of the form r = a ( N/M ) 3/5 .