화학공학소재연구정보센터
Macromolecules, Vol.52, No.21, 8484-8502, 2019
Dielectric Relaxation of Type-A Chains Undergoing Head-to-Tail Association/Dissociation: Difference from Head-to-Head Case and Correlation with Viscoelastic Relaxation
Dielectric relaxation of type-A chains reflects global motion of the chains but is also affected by relative alignment of the dipoles along the chain backbone, namely, by the dipole inversion. Head-to-head association of type-A unimers gives a symmetrically dipole-inverted dimer, and the association/dissociation equilibrium of these unimers and dimer results in motional coupling of these chains, thereby affecting the dielectric behavior. In fact, for this head-to-head case, eigenmode analysis has been reported in the literature to reveal that motional coupling results in moderate retardation and acceleration of the dielectric relaxation of the unimer and dimer obeying the reptation dynamics. In contrast, the coupling has no effect on the dielectric relaxation of the Rouse unimer and dimer, namely, the effect of motional coupling on the dielectric relaxation changes with the type of chain dynamics. This effect was not clarified for head-to-tail associating unimers and their dimer having no dipole inversion. Thus, for completeness, this study makes the eigenmode analysis of the dielectric relaxation for this case of head-to-tail reaction. For the unimer and dimer obeying either Rouse or reptation dynamics, the analysis indicates that the retardation and acceleration of the dielectric relaxation of the unimer and dimer are much more significant for the head-to-tail case than for the head-to-head case irrespective of the chain dynamics, and that the dielectric relaxation function for the former case exactly coincides with the viscoelastic relaxation function if the unimer and dimer obey the reptation dynamics. This result suggests an interesting method of resolving some detail of the chain dynamics under the reaction through comparison of dielectric and viscoelastic responses of the associative type-A chains.