Paper Number
SM26
Session
Polymers Solutions, Melts, and Blends
Title
Relating the entanglement of semiflexible polymer melts to their local inter- and intra-chain structure
Presentation Date and Time
October 12, 2021 (Tuesday) 4:35
Track / Room
Track 1 / Ballroom 5
Authors
- Hoy, Robert S. (University of South Florida, Physics)
- Dietz, Joseph D. (University of South Florida, Physics)
- Kröger, Martin (ETH Zürich)
Author and Affiliation Lines
Robert S. Hoy1, Joseph D. Dietz1 and Martin Kröger2
1Physics, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL 33620; 2ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland
Speaker / Presenter
Hoy, Robert S.
Keywords
theoretical methods; computational methods; polymer melts
Text of Abstract
Predicting the rheological properties of polymer melts from their microscopic structure has been a longstanding challenge. Several theories developed over the past 50 years accurately predict how quantities such as the plateau modulus GN0 scale with dimensionless parameters such as the ratio of Kuhn length to packing length (lK/p). However, these theories have limited ranges of validity and are mutually incompatible. We will discuss our efforts to resolve this issue by developing a unified theory for polymer entanglement that reduces to three previous scaling theories (Lin/Noolandi, Edwards/de Gennes, and Morse) in the regimes for which they were designed. Our theory also treats the crossovers between these regimes, and has been made quantitative by obtaining the relevant chemistry-independent prefactors using molecular dynamics simulations and topological analyses. It is consistent with the theory developed simultaneously and independently by Milner and Bobbili; the two theories are complementary in the sense that each explains things that the other does not. Finally, it agrees well with experiment, and is applicable to recently developed conjugated polymers which possess a melt rheology that cannot be explained by either the L/N model or the Morse model.