TOPOLOGICAL ANALYSIS ON THE SPINODAL DECOMPOSITION AND INTERFACIAL-TENSION OF POLYMER-SOLVENT SYSTEMS

A topological theory has been introduced to extend the theory of Balsa ra and Nauman to evaluate the entropy of inhomogeneous polymer solutio ns. Previous theories have considered only the terms about the displac ement of junction points, while the present theory has obtained a more complete expression for the entropy by adding the topological interac tion terms between strands. There have been predicted the characterist ics of the spinodal decomposition and the interfacial tension of polym er solutions from the resultant expression. It is exposed that the the oretically predictive values show good agreement with the experimental data for polymer solutions.