Related papers: Onset of self-assembly
We have developed a theory of polymer entanglement using an extended Cahn-Hilliard functional, with two extra terms. One is a nonlocal attractive term, operating over mesoscales, which is interpreted as giving rise to entanglement, and the…
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 dynamics of polymer melts at the crossover between unentagled and entangled regimes is formalized here through an extension of the Cooperative Dynamics Generalized Langevin Equation (CDGLE) (\textit{J. Chem. Phys.} 110,7574 (1999)), by…
The Langevin Equation for cooperative dynamics represents the dynamics of polymer melts with chains of increasing degree of polymerization, covering the full range of behavior from the unentangled to the entangled regime. This equation…
We have mapped the physics of polymer melts onto a time-dependent Landau-Ginzburg $|\psi|^4$ field theory using techniques of functional integration. Time in the theory is simply a label for the location of a given monomer along the extent…
We investigate the universality of entanglement kinetics in polymer melts. We compare predictions of a recently developed constitutive equation for disentanglement to molecular dynamics simulations of both united-atom polyethylene and…
We derive an effective Maxwell-London equation for entangled polymer complex under the topological constraint, borrowing the theoretical framework from the topological field theory. We find that the transverse current flux of the test…
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…
Significant challenges exist in the nonlinear extensional rheology of entangled polymers. With simulations, we show that the key to understanding this problem is to recognize the existence and importance of a strain-induced crossover from…
We have mapped the physics of a system of semi-flexible inextensible polymers onto a complex Ginzburg-Landau field theory using techniques of functional integration. It is shown in the limit of low number density of monomers in a melt of…
We propose a field-theoretical approach to a polymer system immersed in an ideal mixture of clustering centers. The system contains several species of these clustering centers with different functionality, each of which connects a fixed…
This work investigates the effects of tangent polar activity on the conformational and dynamic properties of entangled polymer melts through Langevin molecular dynamics simulations. We examine systems composed of all self-propelled,…
The predictions of the polymer mode coupling theory for the finite size corrections to the transport coefficients of entangled polymeric systems are tested in comparisons with various experimental data. It is found that quantitative…
We report simulation results on melts of entangled linear polymers confined in a free-standing thin film. We study how the geometric constraints imposed by the confinement alter the entanglement state of the system compared to the…
Molecular dynamics simulations were performed for a polymer melt. In quiescent states, the inter-chain interaction energy supported by each particle takes relatively large values persistently for long times if the particle is close to an…
We examine entanglements using monomer contacts between pairs of chains in a Brownian-dynamics simulation of a polymer melt. A map of contact positions with respect to the contacting monomer numbers (i,j) shows clustering in small regions…
A polymer-chain network is a collection of interconnected polymer-chains, made themselves of the repetition of a single pattern called a monomer. Our first main result establishes that, for a class of models for polymer-chain networks, the…
We consider the properties of a self-avoiding polymer chain, adsorbed on a solid attractive substrate which is attached with one end to a pulling force. The conformational properties of such chain and its phase behavior are treated within a…
Reptation theory has been highly successful in explaining the unusual material properties of entangled polymer solutions. It reduces the complex many-body dynamics to a single-polymer description where each polymer is envisaged to be…
We study two cross-linked polymer systems in the strong stretching regime. The first consists of two polymers sharing one endpoint, with the other two endpoints coupled by a harmonic potential. Within the weakly bending approximation, we…