Self-organization in growth of branched polymers

✍ Scribed by J.S. Andrade Jr.; L.S. Lucena; A.M. Alencar; J.E. Freitas

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1997
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 462 KB
• Volume: 238
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0378-4371
• DOI: 10.1016/s0378-4371(97)00008-3

✦ Synopsis

We propose a growth mechanism for branched polymers where self-organization leads the system to criticality. By incorporating a dynamical rule which simply regulates the flux of monomers available for aggregation, the system is spontaneously driven to the critical branching probability which separates the finite from infinite growth regimes. The fact that the system reaches and maintains itself close to a critical state without the need of a fine tuning of the parameters is thus discussed in terms of the self-organized criticality (SOC) concept. Finally, we also demonstrate the feasibility of the method in association with a practical implementation of the theoretical model.