ROUGHENING TRANSITION IN BRANCHING POLYMERS

Abstract

A growth model, introduced to model the development of branched polymers in an heterogeneous environment, gives rise to clusters whose boundary is either faceted or rough. We study the transition between these two morphologies as a function of the parameters of the model, impurity concentration and branching ratio. The phase diagram is first obtained by direct numerical simulations, using an original algorithm, based on a self-regulated search of a critical point. Then an analytic computation of the phase boundary is proposed based on a simple approximation. The obtained phase boundary is in good agreement with the numerical results. The nature of the transition is discussed.