Self-diffusion solvent quality

Excluded volume and solvent quality. Up till here, the volume taken up by the polymer itself, i.e., n times the volume of a monomer, has been neglected. In other words, such an ideal random chain has no volume, which would imply that two different segments can occupy the same place in the solvent at the same time. This is, of course, physically impossible, which is why the statistics of a real chain are different from those of a random walk (diffusion). Instead of this, a self-avoiding random walk should be considered, and the average conformation then is different, rm being proportional to n to the power 0.6, rather than 0.5. This means that the molecule is more expanded than an ideal chain. 

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