SCATTERING PROPERTIES OF BRANCHED POLYMERS IN THE HIGH WAVE VECTOR REGION AND GOOD SOLVENT CONDITIONS

Static and dynamic scattering properties of branched polymers in the h igh-wave vector region and in good solvent conditions are derived. The treatment of Benoit et al. is extended to good solvent conditions by calculating explicitly the static intensity, including numerical facto rs. The dynamical properties are also examined and, in particular, the first cumulant of the intermediate scattering function is derived usi ng the preaveraged Oseen tenser. The results are presented in terms of the critical exponent nu to account for the effect of swelling due to excluded volume interactions. These interactions are introduced assum ing that nu is the same everywhere along the chain but ignoring all th e refinements introduced by the renormalization group theories in the case of linear chains. (C) 1995 John Wiley and Sons, Inc.