Semi-dilute polymers

One can easily extend the above analysis to dilute and semi-dilute solutions of EP [65,66] if one recalls [67] from ordinary polymers that the correlation length for a chain of length / in the dilute limit is given by the size R of the chain oc When chains become so long that they start to overlap at I I (X the correlation length of the chain decreases and reflects... 

Under quiescent conditions, polymer solutions are divided into four categories depending on the average distance separating the centers of mass of the molecular coils the dilute, the semi-dilute (or semi-concentrated), the concentrated and the entangled state. 

In the semi-dilute regime, the rate of shear degradation was found to decrease with the polymer concentration [132, 170]. By extrapolation to the dilute regime, it is frequently argued that chain scission should be nonexistent in the absence of entanglements under laminar conditions. No definite proof for this statement has been reported yet and the problem of isolated polymer chain degradation in simple shear flow remains open to further investigation. 

These classical molecular theories may be used to illustrate good agreement with the experimental findings when describing the two extremes of concentration ideally dilute and concentrated polymer solutions (or polymer melts). However, when they are used in the semi-dilute range, they lead to unsatisfactory results. 

Prediction of Rheological Behaviour of Semi-Dilute Polymer Solutions at Finite Rates of Deformation... 

Taking into account the relevance of the range of semi-dilute solutions (in which intermolecular interactions and entanglements are of increasing importance) for industrial applications, a more detailed picture of the interrelationships between the solution structure and the rheological properties of these solutions was needed. The nature of entanglements at concentrations above the critical value c leads to the viscoelastic properties observable in shear flow experiments. The viscous part of the flow behaviour of a polymer in solution is usually represented by the zero-shear viscosity, rj0, which depends on the con-... 

For semi-dilute solutions, two regimes with different slopes are similarly obtained the powers of M, however, can be lower than 1.0 and 3.4. Furthermore, the transition region from the lower to the higher slope is broadened. The critical molar mass, Mc, for polymer solutions is found to be dependent on concentration (decreasing as c increases), although in some cases the variation appears to be very small [60,63]. 

The range of semi-dilute network solutions is characterised by (1) polymer-polymer interactions which lead to a coil shrinkage (2) each blob acts as individual unit with both hydrodynamic and excluded volume effects and (3) for blobs in the same chain all interactions are screened out (the word blob denotes the portion of chain between two entanglements points). In this concentration range the flow characteristics and therefore also the relaxation time behaviour are not solely governed by the molar mass of the sample and its concentration, but also by the thermodynamic quality of the solvent. This leads to a shift factor, hm°d, is a function of the molar mass, concentration and solvent power. 

Below a critical concentration, c, in a thermodynamically good solvent, r 0 can be standardised against the overlap parameter c [r)]. However, for c>c, and in the case of a 0-solvent for parameter c-[r ]>0.7, r 0 is a function of the Bueche parameter, cMw The critical concentration c is found to be Mw and solvent independent, as predicted by Graessley. In the case of semi-dilute polymer solutions the relaxation time and slope in the linear region of the flow are found to be strongly influenced by the nature of polymer-solvent interactions. Taking this into account, it is possible to predict the shear viscosity and the critical shear rate at which shear-induced degradation occurs as a function of Mw c and the solvent power. 

Shear-banded Flow in a Semi-dilute Polymer Solution - T2 Effects... 

Let us remark that relation (6) is given for polymer concentration c lower than the critical overlapping concentration c above which higher terms in c must be considered. In fact, the concentration practically used ( around 10 3 g/cm3) corresponds to the semi-dilute regim for which the behavior is not well known in the case of polyelectrolytes. We have however kept relation (6) by introducing for K a mean apparent value determined from our experiments ( K - 1 )... 

The paper is organized in the following way In Section 2, the principles of quasi-elastic neutron scattering are introduced, and the method of NSE is shortly outlined. Section 3 deals with the polymer dynamics in dense environments, addressing in particular the influence and origin of entanglements. In Section 4, polymer networks are treated. Section 5 reports on the dynamics of linear homo- and block copolymers, of cyclic and star-shaped polymers in dilute and semi-dilute solutions, respectively. Finally, Section 6 summarizes the conclusions and gives an outlook. 

For non-interacting, incompressible polymer systems the dynamic structure factors of Eq. (3) may be significantly simplified. The sums, which in Eq. (3) have to be carried out over all atoms or in the small Q limit over all monomers and solvent molecules in the sample, may be restricted to only one average chain yielding so-called form factors. With the exception of semi-dilute solutions in the following, we will always use this restriction. Thus, S(Q, t) and Sinc(Q, t) will be understood as dynamic structure factors of single chains. Under these circumstances the normalized, so-called macroscopic coherent cross section (scattering per unit volume) follows as... 

Based on the analogy between polymer solutions and magnetic systems [4,101], static scaling considerations were also applied to develop a phase diagram, where the reduced temperature x = (T — 0)/0 (0 0-temperature) and the monomer concentration c enter as variables [102,103]. This phase diagram covers 0- and good solvent conditions for dilute and semi-dilute solutions. The latter will be treated in detail below. 

The relevant part of the phase diagram (x > 0) is shown in Fig. 38. The c-x-plane is divided into four areas. The dilute regime I and I are separated from the semi-dilute regimes III and II, where the different polymer coils interpenetrate each other, by the so-called overlap concentration... 

Fig. 58a, b. Segmental diffusion in semi-dilute polymer solutions. Schematic view of the Q-dependence of the relaxation rates Q(Q) at a fixed concentration. a Good solvent conditions b -conditions. (Reprinted with permission from [168]. Copyright 1994... 

Fig. 59. Incomplete screening of hydrodynamic interactions in semi-dilute polymer solutions. Presentation of different regimes which are passed with increasing concentration. A,C Unscreened and screened Zimm relaxation, respectively, B enhanced Rouse relaxation. (Reprinted with permission from [12]. Copyright 1987 Vieweg and Sohn Verlagsgemeinschaft, Wiesbaden)...

Semi-dilute Solutions of Polymer Blends and Block Copolymers... 

It is now useful to consider how we may define the concentration of polymers in solution. Dilute solutions are ones in which the polymer molecules have space to move independently of each other, i.e. the volume available to a molecule is in excess of the excluded volume of that molecule. Once the concentration reaches a value where there are too many molecules in solution for this to be possible, the solution is considered to be semi-dilute.8 The concentration at which this occurs is denoted by c. For convenience c is defined as the concentration when the volumes of the coils just occupy the total volume of the system, i.e. 

The constant in Equation (5.112) cannot be readily evaluated using scaling theory. Our transformation applies equally well to the radius of gyration or the root mean square end-to-end length, only the numerical constant changes. We would like to be able to apply this idea to the role of concentration in semi-dilute and concentrated polymer regimes. In order to do this we need to define a new parameter s, the number of links or segments per unit volume ... 

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