Dynamical scaling in self-associating polymer aggregates

Abstract

The authors present a simple model that simulates the dynamics of the long flexible self-associating polymer chains immersed in water and develop a dynamical scaling description for the cluster size distribution function for irreversible aggregation. Each chain may have one or several functional groups at each end that can associate with one another. They find that the chain length is a new scaling variable that appears explicitly in the scaling function. The validity of their scaling predictions is confirmed by extensive computer simulations.