EFFECTS OF SOLVENT ON POLYMER-CHAIN DIMENSIONS - A BORN-GREEN-YVON INTEGRAL-EQUATION STUDY

The equilibrium properties of a tangent-hard-sphere polymer chain (wit h site diameter a) in a hard-sphere monomer solvent (with monomer diam eter D = sigma) are studied using the Born-Green-Yvon integral equatio n in conjunction with a two-site solvation potential. The solvation po tential is constructed using low-density results for a hard-sphere tri mer in a hard sphere solvent. The BGY equation has been solved for pol ymers of lengths up to 200 for a range of solvent densities. The theor y accurately describes the compression of the average polymer dimensio ns with increasing solvent density. Scaling exponents relating the pol ymer dimensions to chain length and solvent density are also obtained. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.