On two intrinsic length scales in polymer physics: topological constraints vs. entanglement length

Abstract

The interplay of topological constraints, excluded volume interactions, persistence length and dynamical entanglement length in solutions and melts of linear chains and ring polymers is investigated by means of kinetic Monte Carlo simulations of a three dimensional lattice model. In unknotted and unconcatenated rings, topological constraints manifest themselves in the static properties above a typical length scale $dt\sim 1/\sqrt{l\varphi }$ ($\varphi$ being the volume fraction, $l$ the mean bond length). Although one might expect that the same topological length will play a role in the dynamics of entangled polymers, we show that this is not the case. Instead, a different intrinsic length de, which scales like excluded volume blob size $\xi$, governs the scaling of the dynamical properties of both linear chains and rings.

7 pages. 4 figures

References in corpus (3)

• Topological effects in ring polymers: A computer simulation study
• Topological effects in ring polymers (II): Influence of persistence length
• Segment Motion in the Reptation Model of Polymer Dynamics. I. Analytical Investigation

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• Statistics and Geometrical Picture of Ring Polymer Melts and Solutions
• Scale-free static and dynamical correlations in melts of monodisperse and Flory-distributed homopolymers: A review of recent bond-fluctuation model studies
• Anomalous Structure and Scaling of Ring Polymer Brushes
• A finite excluded volume bond-fluctuation model: Static properties of dense polymer melts revisited
• Local and chain dynamics in miscible polymer blends: A Monte Carlo simulation study
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• Self-organising Dissipative Polymer Structures