Numerical study of irreversible aggregation process in three dimensional polymer and surfactant systems.

We present the results of numerical simulations of the irreversible aggregation process for self-avoiding flexible polymers in three dimensions. We have paid special attention to two experimentally interesting systems: telechelic ionomers and reverse micelles. The dynamics used in this paper to simulate the clustering process is based on Eden’s method. This dynamics was previously introduced by us for two-dimensional systems. We find a scaling relation between the radius of gyration of the cluster Rg, the chain length n and the number of chains N in the cluster in the form Rg∼nαNβ. The values of the exponents α and β calculated from the numerical simulations are somewhat lower than those predicted by Flory’s classical theory. We argue that the lower values of the exponents are possibly due to the finite size of the clusters and the presence of higher order interaction terms not considered in Flory’s theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]