Y. Huang, S. Cheng, J. Polym. Sci. 59, 2819-2831 (2021)
In a Journal of Polymer Science paper, we showed that solvent quality can be varied by tuning the strength of the polymer-solvent interaction that includes an attractive tail. As expected, when this interaction is weak, the solvent is poor and chains show collapsed conformations. The solvent quality gradually improves as the polymer-solvent interaction is made more attractive. Good solutions and swollen chain conformations are all realized. However, as the polymer-solvent interaction is made extremely attractive, roughly when this interaction strength is more than twice the strength of the polymer-polymer and solvent-solvent intra-species interactions, the solvent becomes effectively poor again with chains showing collapsed conformations and solutions exhibiting phase separation. In this limit with strong attractions between the polymer and solvent, the solvent behaves as a glue to stick monomers together, causing a single chain to collapse and multiple chains to aggregate and phase separate.