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Published on: October 25, 2017
Universal description of steric hindrance in flexible polymer gels
Manuel Quesada-Pérez1, José Alberto Maroto-Centeno1, María Del Mar Ramos-Tejada1
1Departamento de Física, Escuela Politécnica Superior de Linares, Universidad de Jaén, Linares, 23700, Jaén, Spain.
Abstract:
In this work, the long-time diffusion of a solute in a chemically crosslinked and flexible hydrogel is computed from a bead-spring model of a polymeric network to assess the effect of steric obstruction. The relative diffusivities obtained for a wide variety of systems can be described by an exponential decay depending on a parameter that differs from that employed for rigid gels. The mathematical expression derived here can approximately predict the diffusivity in flexible gels if steric hindrance is the mechanism ruling diffusion.
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