The local phase transitions of the solvent in the neighborhood of a solvophobic polymer at high pressures

We investigate local phase transitions of the solvent in the neighborhood of a solvophobic polymer chain which is induced by a change of the polymer-solvent repulsion and the solvent pressure in the bulk solution. We describe the polymer in solution by the Edwards model, where the conditional partit...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:arXiv.org 2014-11
Main Authors: Budkov, Yu A, Vyalov, I I, Kolesnikov, A L, Georgi, N, Chuev, G N, Kiselev, M G
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Chains (polymeric)
Coils
Free energy
Gyration
Mean field theory
Partitions (mathematics)
Phase transitions
Polymers
Solvents
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Summary:We investigate local phase transitions of the solvent in the neighborhood of a solvophobic polymer chain which is induced by a change of the polymer-solvent repulsion and the solvent pressure in the bulk solution. We describe the polymer in solution by the Edwards model, where the conditional partition function of the polymer chain at a fixed radius of gyration is described by a mean-field theory. The contributions of the polymer-solvent and the solvent-solvent interactions to the total free energy are described within the mean-field approximation. We obtain the total free energy of the solution as a function of the radius of gyration and the average solvent number density within the gyration volume. The resulting system of coupled equations is solved varying the polymer-solvent repulsion strength at high solvent pressure in the bulk. We show that the coil-globule (globule-coil) transition occurs accompanied by a local solvent evaporation (condensation) within the gyration volume
ISSN:2331-8422
DOI:10.48550/arxiv.1411.1975