Validation of a Novel Self-Consistent Mean-Field Approach and Corresponding Equation to Describe the Concentration Dependence of the Viscosity of Polymer Solutions

Abstract

Polymer composites and polymer solutions are extensively studied in polymer science. For polymer solutions, the viscosity is a key property relevant for many applications, where the intrinsic viscosity plays an important role. A recent self-consistent theoretical description revealed a novel equation relating solution viscosity to concentration and intrinsic viscosity together with characteristic scaling exponents, depending on the concentration regimes. In particular, for small concentrations, an exponent of 3 is predicted. The focus of this work is to challenge this novel description, in particular, the exponent 3. Therefore, a huge amount of data from the literature is reanalyzed, and a novel equation is fitted to the data. Some older data are only accessible from graphs given in the publications; nevertheless, a digitization tool was applied to access these data for analyzing.