The segment-cloud model of the second virial coefficient of polymer solutions: effects of chain length and branching

The segment-cloud model for polymer molecules has been used, and the second virial coefficient A₂ obtained as a function of the interaction parameter z for linear and branched chains having different values of n. It is observed that the chain length effect, though much smaller than in the perturbation theory, increases as the degree of branching increases. Also, the branching parameter g is found to be a better correlating parameter than the segment density distribution for A₂. This is in contrast to earlier results for the perturbation theory of the excluded volume.