Segment Distribution around the Center of Gravity of a Triangular Polymer

Abstract

The segment distribution around the center of gravity is investigated for a special comb polymer (triangular polymer) having the side chains of the same generation number, $g$, as the main backbone. Common to all the other polymers, the radial mass distribution is expressed as the sum of the distribution functions for the end-to-end vectors, $\{{\vec{r}}_{Gh}\}$, from the center of gravity to the monomers on the $h$th generation; the result being, for a large $g$, \begin{equation} φ_{\text{triang}}(s)=\frac{1}{N}\left\{\sum_{h=1}^{g}\left(\frac{d}{2π\left\langle r_{Gh}^{2}\right\rangle}\right)^{\frac{d}{2}}\text{Exp}\left(-\frac{d}{2\left\langle r_{Gh}^{2}\right\rangle}s^2\right)+\sum_{h=2}^{g}\sum_{j=1}^{g-h}\left(\frac{d}{2π\left\langle r_{Gh_{j}}^{2}\right\rangle}\right)^{\frac{d}{2}}\text{Exp}\left(-\frac{d}{2\left\langle r_{Gh_{j}}^{2}\right\rangle}s^2\right)\right\}\notag \end{equation} It is found that the mean square of the radius of gyration varies as ${⟨s_N^2⟩}_0\doteq \frac{7}{15}g{l}^2$, as $g\to \infty$. Since $g\propto \sqrt{N}$ for the triangular polymer, this leads to ${⟨s_N^2⟩}_0^{1/2}\propto N^{1/4}$, giving the same exponent as observed for the randomly branched polymer. On the basis of the present result, we put forth that all the known polymers obey the equality: ${⟨s_N^2⟩}_0=Ag{l}^2$, where $A$ is a polymer-species-dependent coefficient and also depends on the choice of the root monomer. We discuss the extension of this empirical equation.

16 pages, 7 figures, 2 tables