2021 Impact factor 1.624
Soft Matter and Biological Physics
Eur. Phys. J. E 10, 93-102 (2003)
DOI: 10.1140/epje/e2003-00014-1

Statistics of copolymer sequences obtained by polymeranalogous reactions of homopolymer globules

S.I. Kuchanov1, 2, T.V. Zharnikov3, 2 and A.R. Khokhlov1, 2

1  Physics Department, Moscow State University, 119992, Moscow, Russia
2  Universität Ulm, Polymer Science, Albert-Einstein-Allee 11, 89069 Ulm, Germany
3  Nesmeyanov Institute of Elementoorganic Compounds, Vavilov str., 28, 119991, Moscow, Russia

khokhlov@polly.phys.msu.ru

(Received 14 June 2002 Published online: 16 April 2003)

Abstract
For the first time the macrokinetics of polymeranalogous reaction in a homopolymer globule is considered theoretically. Using mathematical apparatus of the theory of markovian stochastic processes we examined the statistical characteristics of the chemical structure of the emerging copolymers. It is shown that when the reaction is kinetically-controlled the sequence distribution of monomeric units in copolymer chains follows Bernoullian statistics. In the opposite regime, when the reaction is diffusion-controlled it is proved that the resulting primary structure is described by the Levy flight distribution. Such copolymers with nonmarkovian character of the alteration of units in macromolecules can not be synthesized in the bulk or in concentrated solutions by means of standard synthetic polymerization procedures.

PACS
36.20.Fz - Constitution (chains and sequences).
02.50.Ga - Markov processes.

© EDP Sciences, Società Italiana di Fisica, Springer-Verlag 2003

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