title: Relaxation process and dynamical heterogeneities in chemical gels: critical behavior of self-overlap and its fluctuation.
abstract: We study the dynamical behavior in chemical gelation, as the gelation threshold is approached from the sol phase. On the basis of the heterogeneous diffusion due to the cluster size distribution, as expected by the percolation theory, we predict the long time decay of the self-overlap as a power law in time t(-3/2). Moreover, under the hypothesis that the cluster diffusion coefficient decreases in size as a power law, s(-x), the fluctuation of the self-overlap, χ(4)(t), exhibits growth at short time as t((3-τ)/x), where τ is the cluster size distribution critical exponent. At longer times, χ(4)(t) decays as t(-3/2) while, at intermediate times, it reaches a maximum at time t*, which scales as s*(x), where s* is the size of the critical cluster. Finally, the value of the maximum χ(4)(t*) scales as the mean cluster size. The theoretical predictions are in agreement with molecular dynamic calculations in a model system, where spherical monomers are bonded by a finite extendable nonlinear elastic (FENE) potential.
authors.affiliation: CNR-SPIN and Department of Physics, University of Naples, Via Cintia, 80126 Napoli, Italy. annalisa.fierro@spin.cnr.it
authors.forename: Annalisa
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Fierro
authors.forename: Tiziana
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Abete
authors.forename: Antonio
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: de Candia
authors.forename: Antonio
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Coniglio