Universal description of steric hindrance in flexible polymer gels

Abstract

In this work, the long-time diffusion of a solute in a chemically crosslinked and flexible hydrogel is computed from a bead-spring model of a polymeric network to assess the effect of steric obstruction. The relative diffusivities obtained for a wide variety of systems can be described by an exponential decay depending on a parameter that differs from that employed for rigid gels. The mathematical expression derived here can approximately predict the diffusivity in flexible gels if steric hindrance is the mechanism ruling diffusion.