Abstract
Phase separation in polymer solutions is highly asymmetric: an inhomogeneous dilute phase of isolated coils is in equilibrium with a homogeneous concentrated solution. Many deviations from the simple Flory-Huggins predictions, found experimentally, can be traced back to this fact. Here, a previously introduced improved description obtained by an explicit coupling of configurational statistics to thermodynamics is extended to polydisperse polymer solutions. It is shown to predict a chain length dependence of the distribution of polymer molecules over the two phases that differs from the original F-H predictions but agrees well with experimental results.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 5434-5439 |
Number of pages | 6 |
Journal | Macromolecules |
Volume | 28 |
Issue number | 16 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jul 1 1995 |
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Organic Chemistry
- Polymers and Plastics
- Inorganic Chemistry
- Materials Chemistry