Related papers: Physics of polymer melts: A novel perspective
We propose a simple mean-field theory for the structure of ring polymer melts. By combining the notion of topological volume fraction and a classical van der Waals theory of fluids, we take into account many body effects of topological…
We have advanced our previous static theory of polymer entanglement involving an extended Cahn-Hilliard functional, to include time-dependent dynamics. We go beyond the Gaussian approximation, to the one-loop level, to compute the frequency…
The conformational statistics of ring polymers in melts or dense solutions is strongly affected by their quenched microscopic topological state. The effect is particularly strong for non-concatenated unknotted rings, which are known to…
We investigate the anomalous dynamics of unentangled polymer melts. The proposed equation of motion formally relates the anomalous center-of-mass diffusion, as observed in computer simulations and experiments, to the nature of the effective…
We study the reaction kinetics of end-functionalized polymer chains dispersed in an unreactive polymer melt. Starting from an infinite hierarchy of coupled equations for many-chain correlation functions, a closed equation is derived for the…
To study the cooling behavior and the glass transition of polymer melts in bulk and with free surfaces a coarse-grained weakly semi-flexible polymer model is developed. Based on a standard bead spring model with purely repulsive…
The morphology and dynamics of polymerization-induced phase separation in the initially homogeneous solution of a non-reactive component in reactive monomers are investigated by incorporating the reaction kinetics into the time-dependent…
We consider a mean-field model of a polymer with a spherically-symmetric finitely supported potential. We describe how the typical size of the polymer depends on the two parameters: the temperature, which approaches the critical value, and…
We generalize a recently investigated lattice model of semiflexible polymers formed under equilibrium polymerization in a solution and conduct a comprehensive investigation of its melting properties. The model is characterized by six…
We consider the model for the distribution of a long homopolymer in a potential field. The typical shape of the polymer depends on the temperature parameter. We show that at a critical value of the temperature the transition occurs from a…
We report results of molecular-dynamics simulations of a model polymer melt consisting of short non-entangled chains in the supercooled state above the critical temperature of mode-coupling theory (MCT). To analyse the dynamics of the…
Molecular dynamics simulation of a generic polymer model is applied to study melts of polymers with different types of intrinsic stiffness. Important static observables of the single chain such as gyration radius or persistence length are…
We investigated the static and dynamic properties of a Rouse ring polymer modified by introducing an effective, spherically symmetric, attractive potential of entropic nature and a memory function describing the effect of dynamic…
We solve a two dimensional model for polymer chain folding in the presence of mechanical pulling force ($f$) exactly using equilibrium statistical mechanics. Using analytically derived expression for the partition function we determine the…
We present a detailed account of a recently proposed phenomenological theory for noncatenated ring polymer melts (Phys. Rev. Lett. 106, 167802 (2011)). A basic assumption lies in the implementation of the noncatenation constraint via the…
In recent times some interesting field theoretical descriptions of the statistical mechanics of entangling polymers have been proposed by various authors. In these approaches, a single test polymer fluctuating in a background of static…
We present a detailed study of the static and dynamic behavior of long semiflexible polymer chains in a melt. Starting from previously obtained fully equilibrated high molecular weight polymer melts [{\it Zhang et al.} ACS Macro Lett. 3,…
In this work a new strategy is proposed in order to build analytic and microscopic models of fluctuating polymer rings subjected to topological constraints. The topological invariants used to fix these constraints belong to a wide class of…
We visualize entanglements in polymer melts using molecular dynamics simulation. A bead at an entanglement interacts persistently for long times with the non-bonded beads (those excluding the adjacent ones in the same chain). The…
Polymer rings in solution are either permanently entangled or not. Permanent topological restrictions give rise to additional entropic interactions apart from the ones arising due to mere chain flexibility or excluded volume. Conversely,…