Zilman A, Kieffer J, Molino F, Porte G, Safran S A
Department of Materials and Interfaces, Weizmann Institute of Science, 76100 Rehovot, Israel.
Phys Rev Lett. 2003 Jul 4;91(1):015901. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.91.015901. Epub 2003 Jul 3.
We study theoretically a model system of a transient network of microemulsion droplets connected by telechelic polymers and explain recent experimental findings. Despite the absence of any specific interactions between either the droplets or polymer chains, we predict that as the number of polymers per drop is increased, the system undergoes a first-order phase separation into a dense, highly connected phase, in equilibrium with dilute droplets, decorated by polymer loops. The phase transition is purely entropic and is driven by the interplay between the translational entropy of the drops and the configurational entropy of the polymer connections between them. Because it is dominated by entropic effects, the phase behavior of the system is extremely robust and is independent of the detailed properties of either polymers or drops.
我们从理论上研究了一个由遥爪聚合物连接的微乳液滴瞬态网络的模型系统，并解释了最近的实验结果。尽管液滴或聚合物链之间不存在任何特定相互作用，但我们预测，随着每滴聚合物数量的增加，系统会经历一级相分离，形成一个致密、高度连接的相，与由聚合物环修饰的稀液滴处于平衡状态。相变纯粹是熵驱动的，由液滴的平移熵和它们之间聚合物连接的构象熵之间的相互作用驱动。由于它由熵效应主导，该系统的相行为极其稳健，并且与聚合物或液滴的详细性质无关。
