Published November 28, 2014 | Version v1
Journal article

The local phase transitions of the solvent in the neighborhood of a solvophobic polymer at high pressures

  • 1. Department of Chemistry, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow (Russian Federation)
  • 2. National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow (Russian Federation)
  • 3. G.A. Krestov Institute of Solution Chemistry of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Ivanovo (Russian Federation)
  • 4. Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, via Morego 30, Genova 16163 (Italy)
  • 5. Institut für Nichtklassische Chemie e.V., Universitat Leipzig, Leipzig (Germany)
  • 6. Ivanovo State University, Ivanovo (Russian Federation)
  • 7. Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences, Leipzig (Germany)
  • 8. Institute of Theoretical and Experimental Biophysics, Russian Academy of Science, Pushchino, Moscow Region (Russian Federation)
  • 9. Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, Dresden (Germany)

Description

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

Additional details

Identifiers

Publishing Information

Journal Title
Journal of Chemical Physics
Journal Volume
141
Journal Issue
20
Journal Page Range
p. 204904-204904.8
ISSN
0021-9606
CODEN
JCPSA6

Optional Information

Notes
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