Viscoelastic properties of an isolated polymer chain with arbitrary flexibility, chain length and hydrodynamic interactions from 4-dimensional Dirac propagator

Abstract

Kholodenko's theory of semiflexible polymer chains, the conformation and properties of which are obtained from the Dirac propagator, shows applicability to dilute solutions of semiflexible polymers of arbitrary persistence and contour lengths by calculating the static scattering function and the squared end-to-end distance of the polymer chain. In the present work, the theory is extended and applied to obtain the intrinsic viscosity with consideration of hydrodynamic interactions. The intrinsic viscosity formula is derived as function of chain length and persistence length. The hydrodynamic interactions are also taken into account following the Kirkwood and Riseman scheme. From this calculation, we obtain the general expression for the intrinsic viscosity and diffusion coefficients covering the whole range of chain flexibilities without confusion with the excluded volume effects. Calculated limiting values of hydrodynamical observables are in complete agreement with those known for random coils and rigid rods.