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Phys. Rev. E 84, 011808 (2011) [14 pages]

Field-theoretical approach to a dense polymer with an ideal binary mixture of clustering centers

Abstract
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Riccardo Fantoni*
National Institute for Theoretical Physics (NITheP) and Institute of Theoretical Physics, Stellenbosch 7600, South Africa

Kristian K. Müller-Nedebock
Institute of Theoretical Physics, Department of Physics, Stellenbosch University, Private Bag X1, Matieland 7602, South Africa

Received 14 July 2010; revised 28 June 2011; published 29 July 2011

We propose a field-theoretical approach to a polymer system immersed in an ideal mixture of clustering centers. The system contains several species of these clustering centers with different functionality, each of which connects a fixed number segments of the chain to each other. The field theory is solved using the saddle point approximation and evaluated for dense polymer melts using the random phase approximation. We find a short-ranged effective intersegment interaction with strength dependent on the average segment density and discuss the structure factor within this approximation. We also determine the fractions of linkers of the different functionalities.

©2011 American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevE.84.011808
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevE.84.011808
PACS:
61.41.+e, 61.25.hp, 61.25.he, 61.25.H-

*rfantoni@ts.infn.it

kkmn@physics.sun.ac.za