Structural properties and scaling of the radius of gyration of two-dimensional star-branched polymers grown by diffusion

We built up star-branched polymers, whose morphology is fully determined by diffusion, with p=1,3,6 and 12 branches with a total of 30,000 monomer units. We investigated their structural properties by calculating the monomer–monomer correlation functions. A detailed finite size scaling analysis of the radius of gyration was also performed to determine the exponent and the corrections to scaling. From these results we calculated the fractal dimension of the branched aggregates and obtained: df=1.222(7), for the linear chain, df=1.2305(8), df=1.247(8) and df=1.261(8) for the three, six and twelve branches polymer, respectively.