Shear induced ordering in branched living polymer solutions

Abstract

We present a coarse-grained model for the dynamics of living polymer solutions which explicitly includes solvent hydrodynamics. We show that lamellar and columnar structures emerge when the solution is subjected to simple shear. In the absence of shear, the model predicts a fluid–gel transition as a function of polymer concentration. At a threshold concentration, the self-intermediate scattering function indicates Zimm-like dynamics at large wave vectors and diffusive dynamics at small wave vectors. The kinetics of scission and recombination clearly demonstrates the existence of mean field and diffusion controlled regimes for the dynamics of living polymers at low and high concentrations respectively.