Chain virial coefficients

Theta temperature is one of the most important thermodynamic parameters of polymer solutions. At theta temperature, the long-range interactions vanish, segmental interactions become more effective and the polymer chains assume their unperturbed dimensions. It can be determined by light scattering and osmotic pressure measurements. These techniques are based on the fact that the second virial coefficient, A2, becomes zero at the theta conditions. 

The potential energy function prohibits double occupancy of any site on the 2nnd lattice. In the initial formulation, which was designed for the simulation of infinitely dilute chains in a structureless medium that behaves as a solvent, the remaining part of the potential energy function contains a finite repulsion for sites that are one lattice unit apart, and a finite attraction for sites that are two lattice units apart [153]. The finite interaction energies for these two types of sites were obtained by generalizing the lattice formulation of the second virial coefficient, B2, described by Post and Zimm as [159] ... 

The virial coefficient A2, A3, etc. is a measure of the resultant interaction between the Polymer chains,... 

The osmotic second virial coefficient A2 is another interesting solution property, whose value should be zero at the theta point. It can be directly related with the molecular second virial coefficient, expressed as B2=A2M /N2 (in volume units). For an EV chain in a good solvent, the second virial coefficient should be proportional to the chain volume and therefore scales proportionally to the cube of the mean size [ 16]. It can, therefore, be expressed in terms of a dimensionless interpenetration factor that is defined as... 

Fig. 12. Inverse of the reduced theta temperature for which the second virial coefficient vanishes from MC calculations on a cubic lattice for linear chains (squares) and f=6 stars (cir-clelike) broken lines (no symbols) stars with f=4 and 5. Reprinted with permission from [144]. Copyright (1991) American Chemical Society...

Second virial coefficients represent the first approximation to the system equation of state. Yethiraj and Hall [148] obtained the compressibility factor, i.e., pV/kgTn, for small stars. They found no significant differences with respect to the linear chains in the pressure vs volume behavior. Escobedo and de Pablo [149] performed simulations in the NPT ensemble (constant pressure) with an extended continuum configurational bias algorithm to determine volumetric properties of small branched chains with a squared-well attractive potential... 

The second virial coefficient is not a universal quantity but depends on the primary chemical structure and the resulting topology of their architecture. It also depends on the conformation of the macromolecules in solution. However, once these individual (i.e., non-universal) characteristics are known, the data can be used as scaling parameters for the description of semidilute solutions. Such scaling has been very successful in the past with flexible linear chains [4, 18]. It also leads for branched macromolecules to a number of universality classes which are related to the various topological classes [9-11,19]. These conclusions will be outlined in the section on semidilute solutions. 

Actually a dilute solution may be defined by the condition of A2M < < 1. The theory of the second virial coefficient has been well developed for flexible chains. The treatment is quite general so that the basic equation can be assumed to hold also for branched structures see [3]. Accordingly A2 is expressed in terms of the... 

Fig. 13. Chain length dependence of the second virial coefficient A2 for some star branched macromolecule, according to Casassa (full line). The data points correspond to measurements [89] (triangles 3-arm, circles 12-arm and rhombus 18-arm stars. Reprinted with permission from [89]. Copyright [1984] American Society...

Finally the second virial coefficient displays a much faster decrease with than observed with linear chains. Exponents of in the relationship... 

The Huggins coefficient kn is of order unity for neutral chains and for polyelectrolyte chains at high salt concentrations. In low salt concentrations, the value of kn is expected to be an order of magnitude larger, due to the strong Coulomb repulsion between two polyelectrolyte chains, as seen in the case of colloidal solutions of charged spheres. While it is in principle possible to calculate the leading virial coefficients in Eq. (332) for different salt concentrations, the essential feature of the concentration dependence of t can be approximated by... 

The properties of solutions of macromolecular substances depend on the solvent, the temperature, and the molecular weight of the chain molecules. Hence, the (average) molecular weight of polymers can be determined by measuring the solution properties such as the viscosity of dilute solutions. However, prior to this, some details have to be known about the solubility of the polymer to be analyzed. When the solubility of a polymer has to be determined, it is important to realize that macromolecules often show behavioral extremes they may be either infinitely soluble in a solvent, completely insoluble, or only swellable to a well-defined extent. Saturated solutions in contact with a nonswollen solid phase, as is normally observed with low-molecular-weight compounds, do not occur in the case of polymeric materials. The suitability of a solvent for a specific polymer, therefore, cannot be quantified in terms of a classic saturated solution. It is much better expressed in terms of the amount of a precipitant that must be added to the polymer solution to initiate precipitation (cloud point). A more exact measure for the quality of a solvent is the second virial coefficient of the osmotic pressure determined for the corresponding solution, or the viscosity numbers in different solvents. 

Here, /u ° and ju are, respectively, the chemical potentials of pure solvent and solvent at a certain concentration of biopolymer V is the molar volume of the solvent Mn=2 y/M/ is the number-averaged molar mass of the biopolymer (sum of products of mole fractions, x, and molar masses, M, over all the polymer constituent chains (/) as determined by the polymer polydispersity) (Tanford, 1961) A2, A3 and A4 are the second, third and fourth virial coefficients, respectively (in weight-scale units of cm mol g ), characterizing the two-body, three-body and four-body interactions amongst the biopolymer molecules/particles, respectively and C is the weight concentration (g ml-1) of the biopolymer. 

It is important for us to keep in mind that biopolymers are generally not monodisperse components. Proteins are typically paucidisperse — mixtures of monomers, dimers and multimers. And polysaccharides are polydisperse their chain lengths and molar masses can be represented as a continuous distribution. For this reason the virial coefficients appearing in equations (5.16) and (5.17) should be interpreted as averages. So the inverse of the number-averaged molar mass of component / is given by... 

If we turn from phenomenological thermodynamics to statistical thermodynamics, then we can interpret the second virial coefficient in terms of molecular parameters via a model. We pursue this approach for two different models, namely, the excluded-volume model for solute molecules with rigid structures and the Flory-Huggins model for polymer chains, in Section 3.4. 

The calculations were carried out for various values of the parameters, the aspect ratio of segment p, and the number ratio of ionizable groups in the chain f. The other parameters were estimated for NIPA gel. All the values of parameters used are summarized in Table 3. The value of v0 was determined by taking the intermediate value between water and NIPA [20]. The parameters Ca, Cb and Cc for the hydrophobic interaction were determined from the values of isobutyl substituents of amino acids, determined by Nemethy and Scheraga [19]. Since there are no data for the 6 temperature and the virial coefficients of this system, we assumed Te to be 273.15 K, and estimated the virial coefficients... 

As pointed out in Chapter III, Section 1 some specific diluent effects, or even remnants of the excluded volume effect on chain dimensions, may be present in swollen networks. Flory and Hoeve (88, 89) have stated never to have found such effects, but especially Rijke s experiments on highly swollen poly(methyl methacrylates) do point in this direction. Fig. 15 shows the relation between q0 in a series of diluents (Rijke assumed A = 1) and the second virial coefficient of the uncrosslinked polymer in those solvents. Apparently a relation, which could be interpreted as pointing to an excluded volume effect in q0, exists. A criticism which could be raised against Rijke s work lies in the fact that he determined % in a separate osmotic experiment on the polymer solutions. This introduces an uncertainty because % in the network may be different. More fundamentally incorrect is the use of the Flory-Huggins free enthalpy expression because it implies constant segment density in the swollen network. We have seen that this means that the reference dimensions excluded volume effect. 

All factors related to the arrangement of the polymer chain in space are classified as tertiary structure. Parameters measurable directly (the radius of gyration RG, the end-to end distance h, the hydrodynamical radius RH, and the asymmetry in light scattering intensity) or indirectly (interaction parameters, the second virial coefficient A2) are related to the dimensions, such as size and shape of the polymer chain in a specific solvent under given conditions of temperature and pressure. For the exact determination of the coil size of macromolecules, it is necessary to ensure that measure-... 

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