Flory theory of a polymer in good solvent

The conformations of a real chain in an athermal or good solvent are determined by the balance of the effective repulsion energy between 

Consider a polymer with N monomers, swollen to size R Rq = bN. Flory theory assumes that monomers are uniformly distributed within the volume R with no correlations between them. The probability of a second 

The Flory estimate of the entropic contribution to the free energy of a real chain is the energy required to stretch an ideal chain to end-to-end distance 7 [Eq. (2.101)] ------------------------------------------------------ 

The total free energy of a real chain in the Flory approximation is the sum of the energetic interaction and the entropic contributions  

The minimum free energy of the chain (obtained by setting dFjdR = Q) gives the optimum size of the real chain in the Flory 

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