title: The local phase transitions of the solvent in the neighborhood of a solvophobic polymer at high pressures.
abstract: We investigate local phase transitions of the solvent in the neighborhood of a solvophobic polymer chain which is induced by a change of the polymer-solvent repulsion and the solvent pressure in the bulk solution. We describe the polymer in solution by the Edwards model, where the conditional partition function of the polymer chain at a fixed radius of gyration is described by a mean-field theory. The contributions of the polymer-solvent and the solvent-solvent interactions to the total free energy are described within the mean-field approximation. We obtain the total free energy of the solution as a function of the radius of gyration and the average solvent number density within the gyration volume. The resulting system of coupled equations is solved varying the polymer-solvent repulsion strength at high solvent pressure in the bulk. We show that the coil-globule (globule-coil) transition occurs accompanied by a local solvent evaporation (condensation) within the gyration volume.
authors.affiliation: G.A. Krestov Institute of Solution Chemistry of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Ivanovo, Russia.
authors.forename: Yu A
authors.initials: YA
authors.lastname: Budkov
authors.affiliation: Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, via Morego 30, Genova 16163, Italy.
authors.forename: I I
authors.initials: II
authors.lastname: Vyalov
authors.affiliation: Ivanovo State University, Ivanovo, Russia.
authors.forename: A L
authors.initials: AL
authors.lastname: Kolesnikov
authors.affiliation: Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences, Leipzig, Germany.
authors.forename: N
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Georgi
authors.affiliation: Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, Dresden, Germany.
authors.forename: G N
authors.initials: GN
authors.lastname: Chuev
authors.affiliation: G.A. Krestov Institute of Solution Chemistry of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Ivanovo, Russia.
authors.forename: M G
authors.initials: MG
authors.lastname: Kiselev