Corrections to Scaling in the Hydrodynamic Properties of Dilute Polymer Solutions

Abstract

We discuss the hydrodynamic radius $R_H$ of polymer chains in good solvent, and show that the leading order correction to the asymptotic law $R_H\propto N^{\nu }$ ($N$ degree of polymerization, $\nu \approx 0.59$) is an ``analytic'' term of order $N^{-(1-\nu )}$, which is directly related to the discretization of the chain into a finite number of beads. This result is further corroborated by exact calculations for Gaussian chains, and extensive numerical simulations of different models of good--solvent chains, where we find a value of $1.591\pm 0.007$ for the asymptotic universal ratio $R_G/R_H$, $R_G$ being the chain's gyration radius. For $\Theta$ chains the data apparently extrapolate to $R_G/R_H\approx 1.44$, which is different from the Gaussian value 1.5045, but in accordance with previous simulations. We also show that the experimentally observed deviations of the initial decay rate in dynamic light scattering from the asymptotic Benmouna--Akcasu value can partly be understood by similar arguments.

13 pages, 10 figures. submitted to J. Chem. Phys

Cited by in corpus (15)

• Lattice Boltzmann simulations of soft matter systems
• The Hydrodynamic Interaction in Polymer Solutions Simulated with Dissipative Particle Dynamics
• High-precision estimate of the hydrodynamic radius for self-avoiding walks
• An O(N^2) Approximation for Hydrodynamic Interactions in Brownian Dynamics Simulations
• Chain morphology, swelling exponent, persistence length, like-charge attraction, and charge distribution around a chain in polyelectrolyte solutions: effects of salt concentration and ion size studied by molecular dynamics simulations
• Universal size ratios of Gaussian polymers with complex architecture: Radius of gyration vs hydrodynamic radius
• Diffusion of a sphere in a dilute solution of polymer coils
• The origin of dynamic scaling in dilute polymer solutions
• The viscosity radius in dilute polymer solutions: Universal behaviour from DNA rheology and Brownian dynamics simulations
• Universality in the diffusion of knots
• Long-time dynamics of Rouse-Zimm polymers in dilute solutions with hydrodynamic memory
• Polymer size in dilute solutions in the good-solvent regime
• Two-parameter model predictions and theta-point crossover for linear-polymer solutions
• Wavelet Monte Carlo dynamics: a new algorithm for simulating the hydrodynamics of interacting Brownian particles
• Toy models of multibranched polymers: opened vs. circular structures