Surface tension of dilute polymer solutions. I. A renormalization group approach

摘要

The surface tension increment is evaluated for dilute polymer solutions. The first virial coefficient is calculated to first order in excluded volume near two limiting boundary conditions: repulsive (Dirichlet) and reflecting (von Neumann). An interpolation function extends the calculations to intermediate values of the polymerndash;surface interaction strength and provides the surface pressure as a function of both polymerndash;polymer and polymerndash;surface interactions. Comparison with experiments for polystyrene in toluene suggest the importance of nonuniversal contributions to the surface tension increment.