Gaussian effective interaction between flexible dendrimers of fourth generation:: A theoretical and experimental study

We propose a theory for the effective interaction between soft dendritic molecules that is based on the shape of the monomer density profile of the macromolecules at infinite dilutions. By applying Flory-type arguments and making use of the experimentally measured density profiles, we derive a Gaussian effective interaction whose parameters are determined by the size and monomer number of the dendrimers that are derived from small-angle neutron scattering (SANS) measurements. By applying this theory to concentrated dendrimer solutions we calculate theoretical structure factors and compare them with experimental ones, derived from a detailed analysis of SANS-data. We find very good agreement between theory and experiment below the overlap concentration, where drastic shape deformations of the dendrimers are absent. (C) 2002 American Institute of Physics.