Crosslinked polymer chains with excluded volume: A new class of branched polymers?

摘要

In this note microgels with and without excluded volume interactions areconsidered. Based on earlier exact computations on Gaussian mircogels, whichare formed by self-crosslinking (with $M$ crosslinks) of polymer chains withchain length $N$ Flory type approximations are used to get first insight totheir behavior in solution. It is shown that two different types of microgelsexist: A special type of branched polymer whose size scales as $R \proptoN^{2/5} M^{-1/5}$, instead of $R \propto N^{1/2}$. The second type are $c^*$ -microgels whose average mesh sizes $r$ are swollen and form self avoiding walkswith a scaling law of the form $r = a (N/M)^{3/5}$.