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Scientific Publications of Jos Aerts

Prediction of the Intrinsic Viscosities of Dendritic, Hyperbranched and Branched Polymers

J.Aerts

Computational and Theoretical Polymer Science, 8, 49 (1998)

Summary

The intrinsic viscosities of a series of dendritic, hyperbranced, branched and linear polymers has been predicted using a bead model. The model is an extension of the Muthukumar model allowing for a large range of degrees of branching. Intrinsic visosities were calculated from the radius of gyration and by using the hydrodynamic tensor approach. It is found that hyperbranched polymers exhibit a maximum of intrinsic viscosity as function of molecular weight, as dendrimers do, but the maximum is situated at a higher level of intrinsic viscosity and shifted to higher molecular weights. Terminating the end groups with long-chain aliphatic tails decreases the intrinsic viscosity once as a certain threshold molecular weight is exceeded. The value of the latter increases with increasing degree of branching.