Self and Tracer Diffusion of Polymers in Solution

TL;DR

This paper reviews and reanalyzes existing literature on polymer diffusion in solution, revealing a unified stretched exponential dependence on concentration and molecular weights, and compares star and linear polymers.

Contribution

It provides a systematic reanalysis showing a universal functional form for polymer diffusion dependence on concentration and molecular weights, unifying previous disparate results.

Findings

Diffusion dependence on concentration, matrix, and probe molecular weights follows a stretched exponential form.

Scaling parameters for star and linear polymers are similar.

The literature's data can be described by a single functional form.

Abstract

The literature on self- and tracer- diffusion of polymers in solution, and on tracer diffusion of probe polymers through solutions of matrix polymers, is reviewed. I show via systematic reanalysis that the entirety of the published literature has its concentration c and matrix M and probe P molecular weight dependences described by a single functional form, namely the stretched exponential in c, P, and M. Correlations of the scaling prefactor and exponents with polymer molecular weight, concentration, and size are examined. Scaling parameters for the diffusion of star polymers do not differ substantially from scaling parameters for the diffusion of linear chains of equal size.