Swelling free energy

SAN resins show considerable resistance to solvents and are insoluble in carbon tetrachloride, ethyl alcohol, gasoline, and hydrocarbon solvents. They are swelled by solvents such as ben2ene, ether, and toluene. Polar solvents such as acetone, chloroform, dioxane, methyl ethyl ketone, and pyridine will dissolve SAN (14). The interactions of various solvents and SAN copolymers containing up to 52% acrylonitrile have been studied along with their thermodynamic parameters, ie, the second virial coefficient, free-energy parameter, expansion factor, and intrinsic viscosity (15). 

AB diblock copolymers in the presence of a selective surface can form an adsorbed layer, which is a planar form of aggregation or self-assembly. This is very useful in the manipulation of the surface properties of solid surfaces, especially those that are employed in liquid media. Several situations have been studied both theoretically and experimentally, among them the case of a selective surface but a nonselective solvent [75] which results in swelling of both the anchor and the buoy layers. However, we concentrate on the situation most closely related to the micelle conditions just discussed, namely, adsorption from a selective solvent. Our theoretical discussion is adapted and abbreviated from that of Marques et al. [76], who considered many features not discussed here. They began their analysis from the grand canonical free energy of a block copolymer layer in equilibrium with a reservoir containing soluble block copolymer at chemical potential peK. They also considered the possible effects of micellization in solution on the adsorption process [61]. We assume in this presentation that the anchor layer is in a solvent-free, melt state above Tg. The anchor layer is assumed to be thin and smooth, with a sharp interface between it and the solvent swollen buoy layer. 

The evaluation of the elastic free energy AFei rests on the assumption that the root-mean-square distance between the ends of the chain is distorted by the same factor a representing the linear expansion of the spatial distribution. As in the treatment of the swelling of network... 

When the network chains contain ionic groups, there will be additional forces that affect their swelling properties. Translational entropy of counterions, Coulomb interactions, and ion pair multiplets are forces that lead to interesting phenomena in ion-containing gels. These phenomena were studied in detail by Khokhlov and collaborators [74-77]. The free energy of the networks used by this group is... 

The presence of ionic moieties in hydrogels makes the theoretical treatment of swelling much more complex. In addition to the AGm xing and AGgiastic in Eq. (1), there is an additional contribution to the total change in Gibbs free energy due to the ionic nature of the polymer network, AG on c. 

The final contribution 4 reflects the change in the free energy of electrostatic interaction with swelling... 

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