https://doi.org/10.1007/s100510050155
Dynamics of strongly entangled polymer systems: activated reptation
1
Department
of Applied Mathematics, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT,
UK
2
Department of Chemistry, University of North Carolina,
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3290, USA
Corresponding author: a A.Semenov@leeds.ac.uk
Received:
25
July
1997
Accepted:
8
October
1997
Published online: 15 January 1998
The effect of excluded-volume interactions on the reptation dynamics of long
polymer chains is considered theoretically. It is shown that interactions
give rise to an exponential increase of the reptation time, 
, if polymer chains are long enough: 
, where 
is the number of monomers per
entanglement. We propose a novel dynamical mechanism of activated reptation
implying that neighboring chains exchange conformations of their terminal
fragments. It is shown that the exchange mechanism is compatible with the
equilibrium polymer chain statistics and that it provides a bridge between
the previous theories.
PACS: 61.25.Hq – Macromolecular and polymer solutions; polymer melts; swelling / 83.10.Nn – Polymer dynamics / 83.20.Fk – Reptation theories
© EDP Sciences, Società Italiana di Fisica, Springer-Verlag, 1998
