arXiv · 1411.1975
The local phase transitions of the solvent in the neighborhood of a solvophobic polymer at high pressures
Abstract
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
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Yu. A. Budkov, I. I. Vyalov, A. L. Kolesnikov, N. Georgi, G. N. Chuev, M. G. Kiselev. 2014-11-07. The local phase transitions of the solvent in the neighborhood of a solvophobic polymer at high pressures. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4902092
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