Comparative Study on the Models of Thermoreversible Gelation

A critical survey on the various theoretical models of thermoreversible gelation, such as the droplet model of condensation, associated-particle model, site-bond percolation model, and adhesive hard sphere model, is presented, with a focus on the nature of the phase transition predicted by them. On the basis of the classical tree statistics of gelation, combined with a thermodynamic theory of associating polymer solutions, it is shown that, within the mean-field description, the thermoreversible gelation of polyfunctional molecules is a third-order phase transition analogous to the Bose-Einstein condensation of an ideal Bose gas. It is condensation without surface tension. The osmotic compressibility is continuous, but its derivative with respect to the concentration of the functional molecule reveals a discontinuity at the sol-gel transition point. The width of the discontinuity is directly related to the amplitude of the divergent term in the weight-average molecular weight of the cross-linked three-dimensional polymers. The solution remains homogeneous in the position space, but separates into two phases in the momentum space; particles with finite translational momentum (sol) and a network with zero translational momentum (gel) coexist in a spatially homogeneous state. Experimental methods used to detect the singularity at the sol-gel transition point are suggested.