Dinâmica de redes poliméricas complexas

Abstract

In polymer physics one of the basic challenges is to understand the relationship between the topology of polymers and their dynamics. This quest started with the research work of Rouse, who investigated the diluted solutions of linear polymer chains. This simple model disregards the hydrodynamic interactions, the excluded volume and the entanglement effects. Many theoretical studies, which use this model, have been dedicated to polymers with more complex architecture, leading to the concept of Generalized Gaussian Structures (GGSs). In this thesis we have extended the study of complex polymer networks within GGS model to two kinds of networks, namely a treelike small-world network(SWN) and a modified dendrimer structure (Spiderweb). We study theoretically and numerically the dynamics of both flexible and semiflexible small-world polymers networks and the dynamics of flexible spiderwebs. We monitor in details the influence of all our parameters to the eigenvalue spectrum, to the dynamical complex modulus G∗(ω), with its two parts: the storage modulus, G'(ω), and the loss modulus, G''(ω). We also study the behavior of the average monomer displacement, << Y (t) >>, for all these networks.