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.
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