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The European Physical Journal B
ISSN: 1434-6028 (printed version)
ISSN: 1434-6036 (electronic version)
Abstract Volume 1 Issue 1 (1998) pp 87-94
Dynamics of strongly entangled polymer systems: activated reptation
A.N. Semenov (1) (a), M. Rubinstein (2)
(1) Department of Applied Mathematics, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK
(2) Department of Chemistry, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3290, USA
Received: 25 July 1997 / Accepted: 8 October 1997
Abstract: The effect of excluded-volume interactions on the reptation dynamics of long polymer chains is considered theoretically. It is shown that interactions give rise to an exponential increase of the reptation time, $\tau _{\rm rep} \sim \exp [(N/N^{*})^{2/3}] $, if polymer chains are long enough: $ N\gt N^{*}\sim N\rm _e^3 $, where $N\rm _e $ is the number of monomers per entanglement. We propose a novel dynamical mechanism of activated reptation implying that neighboring chains exchange conformations of their terminal fragments. It is shown that the exchange mechanism is compatible with the equilibrium polymer chain statistics and that it provides a bridge between the previous theories.
PACS. 61.25.Hq Macromolecular and polymer solutions; polymer melts; swelling - 83.10.Nn Polymer dynamics - 83.20.Fk Reptation theories
(a) e-mail: A.Semenov@leeds.ac.uk
Online publication: February 4, 1998
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