STATIC AND DYNAMICAL PROPERTIES OF POLYSTYRENE IN TRANS-DECALIN

The scaling theories, 1-9 developed by de Gennes and others, have been successful in describing the static and dynamical properties of polymer solutions. Instead of the use of mean-field-type arguments of classical theories of the statistical thermodynamics of polymer solutions, such as the Flory-Huggins theory, 10 the ideas proposed by de Gennes are very different in spirit and are based upon an analogy with critical phenomena in magnetic systems, de Gennes took over the results of the renormalization group technique and evaluated the exponents in power-law relations by matching cross-over properties. Kosmas and Freed, who obtained the general scaling relations without recourse to renormalization group methods or to analogies with magnets or critical phenomena, have also derived static scaling relations for polymer solutions at finite concentrations.11 Static properties of entangled polymer solutions have been checked by neutron experiments, 3 while Adam and Delsanti12 have studied dynamical properties of polymer (polystyrene) solutions in a good solvent (benzene). The agreement between theory and experiments has been excellent. When the translational diffusion coefficient D in the dilute region was observed to behave as D ~ N-0.55 instead of a predicted value D ~ N-0.6 where N is the number of monomers per chain, Weill and des Cloizeaux13 have shown that the dynamical properties of polymers converge more slowly to the asymptotic infinite molecular weight limit than static properties. © 1979, American Chemical Society. All rights reserved.