DYNAMICS OF TELECHELIC IONOMERS - CAN POLYMERS DIFFUSE LARGE DISTANCES WITHOUT RELAXING STRESS

We consider dynamics of entangled telechelic ionomers in the limit of strong association, where there are no free chain ends. Stress relaxat ion occurs in such a system by an exchange between pairs of chain ends in the associated state. For complete relaxation of stress, an exchan ge event must take place on every entanglement strand. However, diffus ion can occur on an arbitrarily shorter time scale, leading to the int eresting result that chains can diffuse distances many times their coi l size without relaxing stress.