Phase separation in polymer solutions and gels

Phase-separation Phenomena in Polymer Solutions

Critical polymer-polymer phase separation in ternary solutions.

We study polymer-polymer phase separation in a common good solvent by means of Monte Carlo simulations of the bond-fluctuation model. Below a critical, chain-length-dependent concentration, no phase separation occurs. For higher concentrations, the critical demixing temperature scales nonlinearly with the total monomer concentration, with a power law relatively close to a renormalization-group ...

Phase separation of polymer solutions and interactions of globules

A new method is proposed for a quantitative investigation of interchain interactions in a poor solvent within the framework of a Lifshits type mean-field approximation. Density distributions and interaction free energy for two globules equilibrated at an arbitrary distance ( from each other are calculated. The corresponding pair virial coefficient and coexistence binodal curve in the second vir...

Phase Separation in Polymer Solutions Induced by Shear

We numerically investigate nonlinear regimes of shear-induced phase separation in entangled polymer solutions. Use is made of a time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau model describing two fluid dynamics of polymer and solvent. As a new dynamic variable a conformation tensor is introduced to represent chain deformations. Above the coexistence curve a dynamical steady states is attained, where fluctuatio...

Theory of solvation-induced reentrant phase separation in polymer solutions.