Tube diameter of stretched and compressed permanently entangled polymers

Jian Qin, Jungseob So, Scott T. Milner

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

11 Scopus citations

Abstract

Entangled ring polymers behave like gels. By applying uniaxial compression and stretching to such gels initially equilibrated with molecular rebridging Monte Carlo moves, and using isoconfigurational ensemble simulations to explore the tube confinement, we studied the strain dependence of the tube contour and tube diameter. It is found that the tube contour length increases with both compression and stretching, the tube diameter increases with strain monotonically, and the strain dependences of both tube contour length and tube segment orientation are well described by the independent alignment approximation (IAA). For strains ranging between 0.5 and 2.0, fractional changes of the tube contour length and the tube diameter are less than 10%. The orientation dependence of the tube diameter is also analyzed and found to be weak. These results should prove useful for constructing theories of gel elasticity.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)9816-9822
Number of pages7
JournalMacromolecules
Volume45
Issue number24
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 21 2012

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Organic Chemistry
  • Polymers and Plastics
  • Inorganic Chemistry
  • Materials Chemistry

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