Field-theoretical approach to a dense polymer with an ideal binary mixture of clustering centers

TL;DR

This paper develops a field-theoretical model for dense polymers with clustering centers, analyzing their interactions and structure factors using saddle point and random phase approximations.

Contribution

It introduces a novel field-theoretical framework for polymers with multiple clustering center species and evaluates their properties in dense melts.

Findings

Short-range effective inter-segment interactions depend on segment density.

Structure factor analyzed within the random phase approximation.

Fractions of linkers with different functionalities are determined.

Abstract

We propose a field-theoretical approach to a polymer system immersed in an ideal mixture of clustering centers. The system contains several species of these clustering centers with different functionality, each of which connects a fixed number segments of the chain to each other. The field-theory is solved using the saddle point approximation and evaluated for dense polymer melts using the Random Phase Approximation. We find a short-ranged effective inter-segment interaction with strength dependent on the average segment density and discuss the structure factor within this approximation. We also determine the fractions of linkers of the different functionalities.