Topological changes at the gel transition of a reversible polymeric network

Abstract

We investigate the network topologies of an ensemble of telechelic polymers. The telechelic polymers serve as links between nodes, which consist of aggregates of their telechelic endgroups. Our analysis shows that the degree distribution is bimodal and consists of two Poissonian distributions with different average degrees. The number of nodes in each of them as well as the distribution of links depends on temperature. By comparing the eigenvalue spectra of the simulated network gels with those of reconstructed networks, the most likely ttopology at each temperature is determined.