Universality of the perturbative definition of the Flory-Huggins parameter
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532b-lhkh.pdf
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Published version
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Author(s)
Petrov, Artem
Hernández-Mendoza, Guillermo A
Alexander-Katz, Alfredo
Date Issued
March 9, 2026
Journal
Physical Review Research
Publisher
American Physical Society (APS)
Citation
Petrov, Artem, Hernández-Mendoza, Guillermo A and Alexander-Katz, Alfredo. 2026. "Universality of the perturbative definition of the Flory-Huggins parameter." Physical Review Research, 8 (1).
Version
Final published version
Abstract
The effective Flory-Huggins parameter χe is one of the most important characteristics of any multicomponent
polymer system. This parameter characterizes the free energy of interaction between monomers of different
types and controls the phase behavior of polymer mixtures. In this work, we developed a perturbation theory and
derived how χe depends on the details of an arbitrary coarse-grained polymer model. After defining χe in this
way, we found that the models of symmetric polymer blends and diblock copolymer melts behaved universally:
Their phase transition points, free energies, and mesoscopic invariant structure factors depended solely on
the chain architecture, the invariant chain length N¯, and the interaction parameter χeN. To parametrize our
perturbative expression for χe, only the effective coordination number distribution in a reference homogeneous
system needs to be measured. This distribution, in turn, can be directly mapped onto coarse-grained model
parameters set prior to simulation, which clarifies how model construction influences χe. Our definition of χe
enables straightforward quantitative comparison of models with each other and with experiments, which will
facilitate the computational design of multicomponent polymer materials.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Chemical Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Materials Science and Engineering
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1103/532b-lhkh
