If a solvent is precisely poor enough to cancel the effects of excluded volume expansion, the theta (θ) condition is satisfied. For a given polymer-solvent pair, the theta condition is satisfied at a certain temperature, called the theta (θ) temperature or theta point. A solvent at this temperature is called a theta solvent.
In general, measurements of the properties of polymer solutions depend on the solvent. However, when a theta solvent is used, the measured characteristics are independent of the solvent. They depend only on short-range properties of the polymer such as the bond length, bond angles, and sterically favorable rotations. The polymer chain will behave exactly as predicted by the random walk or ideal chain model. This makes experimental determination of important quantities such as the root mean square end-to-end distance or the radius of gyration much simpler.
Additionally, the theta condition is also satisfied in the bulk amorphous polymer phase. Thus, the conformations adopted by polymers dissolved in theta solvents are identical to those adopted in bulk polymer polymerization .