STRUCTURAL AND DYNAMICAL PROPERTIES OF BRANCHED POLYMERS AND GELS AND THEIR RELATION WITH ELASTIC PERCOLATION NETWORKS

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Abstract
Experimental data for structural and dynamical properties of branched polymers and gels near the sol-gel transition, such as the viscosity, elastic moduli, the distribution of relaxation times, and the fractal dimension are reviewed and discussed. The percolation model of gelation is described, and two vector variants of it for calculating the viscosity and elastic moduli of (physical and chemical) gels, namely, the superelastic and elastic percolation networks are introduced and their scaling properties near the percolation threshold are discussed. It is argued that such networks provide theoretically-consistent explanations for the experimental data for static and dynamic properties of polymers near the sol-gel transition. These models are also contrasted with the scalar percolation models for predicting the same properties of gel polymers.

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