2020/12/01 by K. Haydukivska, Haydukivska, Khristine, Ostap Kalyuzhnyi +5
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Chemical Engineering · Materials Science · #FOS: Physical sciences #Material Dynamics and Properties #Protein Structure and Dynamics #Rheology and Fluid Dynamics Studies #Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2012.00469
openalex publication_date 2020/12/01 · openalex created_date 2022/07/25 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We consider the simplest representative of the class of multiply branched\npolymer macromolecules, known as a pom-pom structure. The molecule consists of\na backbone linear chain terminated by two branching points with functionalities\n(numbers of side chains) of f1 and f2, respectively. In a symmetrical\ncase, considered in the present study, one has f1=f2=f with the total\nnumber of chains F=2f+1. Whereas rheological behaviour of melts of pom-pom\nmolecules are intensively studied so far, we turn our attention towards\nconformational properties of such polymers in a regime of dilute solution. The\nuniversality concept, originated in the critical phenomena and in scaling\nproperties of polymers, is used in this study. To be able to compare the\noutcome of the direct polymer renormalization approach with that obtained via\ndissipative particle dynamics simulations, we concentrated on the universal\nratios of the shape characteristics. In this way the differences in the energy\nand length scales are eliminated and the universal ratios depend only on space\ndimension, solvent quality and a type of molecular branching. Such universal\nratios were evaluated both for a whole molecule and for its individual\nbranches. For some shape properties, theory and simulations are in excellent\nagreement, for other we found the interval of F where both agree reasonably\nwell. Combination of theoretical and simulation approaches provide thorough\nquantitative description of the peculiarities of swelling effects and spatial\nextension of pom-pom molecules and are compared with the known results for\nsimpler molecular topologies.\n