Dynamical Monte Carlo Study of Equilibrium Polymers : Static Properties

J. P. Wittmer; A. Milchev; M. E. Cates

doi:10.1063/1.476623

paper

Dynamical Monte Carlo Study of Equilibrium Polymers : Static Properties

arXiv:cond-mat/9805263 · doi:10.1063/1.476623

Abstract

We report results of extensive Dynamical Monte Carlo investigations on self-assembled Equilibrium Polymers (EP) without loops in good solvent. (This is thought to provide a good model of giant surfactant micelles.) Using a novel algorithm we are able to describe efficiently both static and dynamic properties of systems in which the mean chain length $\Lav$ is effectively comparable to that of laboratory experiments (up to 5000 monomers, even at high polymer densities). We sample up to scission energies of $E / k_{B} T = 15$ over nearly three orders of magnitude in monomer density $ϕ$ , and present a detailed crossover study ranging from swollen EP chains in the dilute regime up to dense molten systems. Confirming recent theoretical predictions, the mean-chain length is found to scale as $\Lav \propto ϕ^α\exp(δE)$ where the exponents approach $α_{d} = δ_{d} = 1/ (1 + γ) \approx 0.46$ and $α_{s} = 1/2 [1 + (γ - 1) / (ν d - 1)] \approx 0.6, δ_{s} = 1/2$ in the dilute and semidilute limits respectively. The chain length distribution is qualitatively well described in the dilute limit by the Schulz-Zimm distribution $\cN(s)\approx s^{γ-1} \exp(-s)$ where the scaling variable is $s=γL/\Lav$. The very large size of these simulations allows also an accurate determination of the self-avoiding walk susceptibility exponent $γ \approx 1.165 \pm 0.01$ . ....... Finite-size effects are discussed in detail.

15 pages, 14 figures, LATEX

References in corpus (1)

Computational confirmation of scaling predictions for equilibrium polymers

Dynamical Monte Carlo Study of Equilibrium Polymers : Static Properties

Abstract

References in corpus (1)

Cited by in corpus (21)