Light Scattering Study on Polymer Chain Conformation: Polystyrene in Good Solvents

Solvent dependence of the static solution properties of a polymer chain was studied by static light scattering technique for polystyrene in three good solvents, toluene, tetrahydrofuran and $CCl_4$. The molecular parameters such as radius of gyration and second virial coefficients of polystyrene are found to be clearly larger in THF than the other two solvents and they are in the order of tetrahydrofuran > toluene > $CCl_4$. The radius of gyration shows the same order while the difference is smaller. Nontheless, the penetration functions are found to have a comparable value about 0.2, which confirms the universality of the penetration function in high expansion regime over different nature of solvents.