Eur. Phys. J. E (2007) 23: 349-354
https://doi.org/10.1140/epje/i2006-10220-0

Regular Article

Hydrodynamic screening of star polymers in shear flow

Institut für Festkörperforschung, Forschungszentrum Jülich, 52425, Jülich, Germany

^* e-mail: m.ripoll@fz-juelich.de

Received: 14 December 2006
Accepted: 20 June 2007
Published online: 22 August 2007

Abstract

The mutual effects of the conformations of a star polymer in simple shear flow and the deformation of the solvent flow field are investigated by a hybrid mesoscale simulation technique. We characterize the flow field near the star polymer as a function of its functionality (arm number) f . A strong screening of the imposed flow is found inside the star polymer, which increases with increasing f . To elucidate the importance of hydrodynamic screening, we compare results for hydrodynamic and random solvents. The dependence of the polymer orientation angle on the Weissenberg number shows a power law behavior with super-universal exponent --independent of hydrodynamic and excluded-volume interactions. In contrast, the polymer rotation frequency changes qualitatively when hydrodynamic interactions are switched on.