Distinct diffusion in polymer-solvent mixtures

The specificity of interactions between pairs of molecules cannot be explicitly given by experimental transport coefficients such as intra- or mutual diffusion coefficients. But a microscopic interpretation of the transport properties exists, where distinct diffusion coefficients(DDCs) are related to preferential, correlated motion among distinct molecules. Since in general the DDCs do not play the role of an indicator for molecular self-association phenomena if not compared with some appropriate standard, here we propose DDCs of hard spheres at the second order of volume fraction as new standard coefficients. The analysis based on these novel DDCs is designed to study intermolecular interaction between macromolecule and solvent. Comparisons of the novel non-ideal with previous ideal reference states were done, and their combined use is shown to reinforce information conveyed by the usual velocity correlation analysis. The comparison of novel hard sphere standards with real DDCs, corresponding to an homologous chemical series of poly(ethylene glycol)-water mixtures, provides a look at this polymer-solvent mixture in a dilute and semi-dilute regime.