Renormalization group theory behavior

In good solvents, the mean force is of the repulsive type when the two polymer segments come to a close distance and the excluded volume is positive this tends to swell the polymer coil which deviates from the ideal chain behavior described previously by Eq. (1). Once the excluded volume effect is introduced into the model of a real polymer chain, an exact calculation becomes impossible and various schemes of simplification have been proposed. The excluded volume effect, first discussed by Kuhn [25], was calculated by Flory [24] and further refined by many different authors over the years [27]. The rigorous treatment, however, was only recently achieved, with the application of renormalization group theory. The renormalization group techniques have been developed to solve many-body problems in physics and chemistry. De Gennes was the first to point out that the same approach could be used to calculate the MW dependence of global properties... 

Despite arising from a diverse set of intermolecular or interatomic forces, as seen by our examples in the previous section, these phenomena give rise to a very similar set of characteristics near the phase transition. The observation of this kind of behavior began more than a century ago, but the explanation of why this should be so has occurred only within the past 25 years. The details associated with the explanation are developed in renormalization group theory whose treatment lies outside the scope of this text. We will present only a qualitative survey of the results of the theory. 

The correlation length is also found to scale in a power-law fashion, and it becomes very large at the transition temperature. One of the most significant results of renormalization group theory is to show that the behavior of the correlation length in the critical region is the basis of the power-law singularities observed in the other thermodynamic properties. 

The key aspects of the modern understanding of phase transitions and the development of renormalization group theory can be summarized as follows. First was the observation of power-law behavior and the realization that critical exponents were, to some extent, universal for all kinds of phase transitions. Then it became clear that theories that only treated the average value of the order parameter failed to account for the observed exponents. The recognition that power-law behavior could arise from functions that were homogeneous in the thermodynamic variables and the scale-invariant behavior of such functions... 

Over the last 10 years or so, a great deal of work has been devoted to the study of critical phenomena in binary micellar solutions and multicomponent microemulsions systems [19]. The aim of these investigations in surfactant solutions was to point out differences if they existed between these critical points and the liquid-gas critical points of a pure compound. The main questions to be considered were (1) Why did the observed critical exponents not always follow the universal behavior predicted by the renormalization group theory of critical phenomena and (2) Was the order of magnitude of the critical amplitudes comparable to that found in mixtures of small molecules The systems presented in this chapter exhibit several lines of critical points. Among them, one involves inverse microemulsions and another, sponge phases. The origin of these phase separations and their critical behavior are discussed next. 

The development of adsorption theory provides the explanation of the macromolecule behavior in the adsorption layer and provides the basis of arguments on the experimental results. A few theoretical models, describing the adsorbed macromolecule, are widely used now. Self-consistent field theory or mean field approach is used to calculate the respective distribution of trains, loops, and tails of flexible macromolecule in the adsorption layer [22-26]. It allows one to find the segment density distribution in the adsorption layer and to calculate the adsorption isotherms and average thickness of the adsorption layer. Scaling theory [27-29] is used to explain the influence of the macromolecule concentration in the adsorption layer on the segment density profile and its thickness. Renormalization group theory [30-33] is used to describe the excluded volume effects in polymer chains terminally attached to the surface. The Monte Carlo method has been used for the calculation of the density profile in the adsorption layer [33-35]. 

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