Olympic Gels: Concatenation and Swelling

Abstract

Concatenation and equilibrium swelling of Olympic gels, which are composed of entangled cyclic polymers, is studied by Monte Carlo Simulations. The average number of concatenated molecules per cyclic polymers, $f_n$, is found to depend on the degree of polymerization, $N$, and polymer volume fraction at network preparation, ${\varphi }_0$, as $f_n{\varphi }_0^{\nu /(3\nu -1)}N$ with scaling exponent $\nu =0.588$. In contrast to chemically cross-linked polymer networks, we observe that Olympic gels made of longer cyclic chains exhibit a smaller equilibrium swelling degree, $Q{N}^{-0.28}{\varphi }_0^{-0.72}$, at the same polymer volume fraction ${\varphi }_0$. This observation is explained by a desinterspersion process of overlapping non-concatenated rings upon swelling, which is tested directly by analyzing the change in overlap of the molecules upon swelling.

References in corpus (7)

• Effect of Topology on the Conformations of Ring Polymers
• Topological interactions between ring polymers: Implications for chromatin loops
• Ring conformations in bidisperse blends of ring polymers
• The Swelling of Olympic Gels
• The direct link model for polymer rings as a topological field theory and the second topological moment in dense systems
• Second Topological Moment < m^2 > of Two Closed Entangled Polymers
• Calculation of Second Topological Moment <m^2> of Two Entangled Polymers

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Computer simulations of melts of ring polymers with non-conserved topology: A dynamic Monte Carlo lattice model