Branched Polymers with Excluded Volume Effects/ Configurations of Comb Polymers in Two- and Three-dimensions

TL;DR

This study examines how excluded volume effects influence the size scaling of comb polymers in good solvents, revealing that fully stretched configurations lead to a universal size exponent of 1/2 regardless of side chain isomerization.

Contribution

It demonstrates that for comb polymers with fully stretched backbones and side chains, the size exponent remains at 1/2, independent of side chain configurational isomerization.

Findings

Size exponent is 1/2 for fully stretched comb polymers.

Excluded volume effects do not alter the size exponent in these configurations.

Pre-exponential factors vary with side chain isomerization.

Abstract

We investigate the excluded volume effects in good solvents for the isolated comb polymers having $\nu_{0}=1/4$. In particular, we investigate the change of the size exponent, $\nu$, defined by $\langle s_{N}^{2}\rangle\propto N^{2\nu}$, for the various fully-expanded configurations. The results show that, given the fully stretched backbone and side chains, the exponent takes the value, $\nu=1/2$, irrespective of the configurational isomerization of side chains; only the pre-exponential factor changes.