SOLVENT EFFECTS ON POLYMER CONFORMATION - DENSITY-FUNCTIONAL-THEORY APPROACH

Conformation properties of a polymer in a solvent are studied based on density-functional theory. Instead of integrating out the solvent den sity field in order to reduce the whole problem to that of one polymer with medium-induced effective interactions, we consider the solvent d ensity profile and the polymer conformation self-consistently on equal footing. A mio-dimensional model system is considered for which some numerical results art, shown, with emphasis placed on solvents effects .