Disorder effects on the static scattering function of star branched polymers

TL;DR

This paper investigates how structural disorder affects the static scattering function of star branched polymers, revealing that increased disorder correlations lead to larger star sizes relative to linear polymers.

Contribution

It introduces a renormalization approach to analyze the impact of correlated structural defects on star polymer size ratios in various dimensions.

Findings

Disorder correlations increase the size ratio g(f) of star to linear polymers.

The size of star polymers relative to linear ones grows with increased disorder correlation.

The study provides a universal measure for experimental comparison.

Abstract

We present an analysis of the impact of structural disorder on the static scattering function of f-armed star branched polymers in d dimensions. To this end, we consider the model of a star polymer immersed in a good solvent in the presence of structural defects, correlated at large distances r according to a power law \sim r^{-a}. In particular, we are interested in the ratio g(f) of the radii of gyration of star and linear polymers of the same molecular weight, which is a universal experimentally measurable quantity. We apply a direct polymer renormalization approach and evaluate the results within the double \varepsilon=4-d, \delta=4-a-expansion. We find an increase of g(f) with an increasing \delta. Therefore, an increase of disorder correlations leads to an increase of the size measure of a star relative to linear polymers of the same molecular weight.