Manifestations of Rigid Network Defects

Similar inhomogeneities, also attributable to local variations in crosslink density and the consequential network flaws, were observed in non-elastomeric networks in the glassy state. Some of these observations date from as early as the late 1950s [722, 723]. Although several families of polymers exhibited these inhomogeneities, they appear to have one common denominator they are all 

The average number of bends per segment is expected to be directly dependent on its average length, 1 . Therefore, the swelling ratio should be affected by Iq  

Conversely, the swelling ratio is inversely dependent on the functionality of the rigid branchpoints, the higher the functionality the lower the swelling  

Assembling together the above proportionalities, we find that, for a gel of flawless rigid network  

The most dramatic swelling effects of network defects were observed in gels of networks created from rigid fractal polyamides in the absence of monomers 

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