Title: On the swelling properties of pom-pom polymers: impact of backbone length
Author(s):

	K. Haydukivska (Institute for Condensed Matter Physics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, 1 Svientsitskii St., 79011 Lviv, Ukraine; Institute of Physics, University of Silesia, 75 Pułku Piechoty 1, 41-500 Chorzów, Poland )
	V. Blavatska (Institute for Condensed Matter Physics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, 1 Svientsitskii St., 79011 Lviv, Ukraine; Dioscuri Centre for Physics and Chemistry of Bacteria, Institute of Physical Chemistry, Polish Academy of Sciences, 01-224 Warsaw, Poland)

The present work continues our previous studies of pom-pom molecule [K. Haydukivska, O. Kalyuzhnyi, V. Blavatska, and J. Ilnytskyi, J. Mol. Liq. 328, 115456 (2021); Condens. Matter Phys. 25, 23302 (2022)]. The molecule consists of a linear backbone with two branching points at both ends, with functionalities f₁ and f₂. Here, the main attention is concentrated on studying the impact of the central backbone length on the configurational charactersitics of complex molecule, such as size and shape ratios. We apply both a direct polymer renormalization scheme based on continuous chain model and the alternative Wei's method to analyze a set of size and shape properties of pom-pom polymers in dilute solution. The size ratio of a pom-pom and a chain polymer of the same total molecular mass is calculated with an excluded volume interaction taken into account, and estimates for asphericity are found in Gaussian approximation, whereas for the size ratio we found a monotonous dependence of the length of backbone at different functionalities of side arms. Results for asphericity show a non-trivial behaviour.

Key words: polymers, shape characteristics, continuous chain model, Wei's method

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