SIZE AND SHAPE PROPERTIES OF COMPLEX MACROMOLECULES:ANALYTICAL AND NUMERICAL APPROACHES

Viktoria Blavatska (Personal webpage)

Prediction of the impact of complex architecture of branched macromolecules on their behaviour in solvents is a problem of continuing interest in polymer physics. In statistical description of polymers, a considerable attention is paid to the universal quantities describing equilibrium size and shape of typical conformations adapted by individual macromolecules in a solvent. In particular, the folding dynamics of macromolecules and hydrodynamics of polymer fluids are strongly dependent on size and shape measures of single macromolecules, which in turn are determined by their topology. We will consider a set of complex polymer architectures such as star, rosette and pom-pom polymer, as well as more general polymer networks. The analytical and numerical approaches, which are applied to obtain the quantitative estimates for the set of universal size and shape characteristics, will be discussed.