Surface effects in the crystallization process of elastic flexible polymers
Stefan Schnabel, Thomas Vogel, Michael Bachmann, and Wolfhard Janke
TL;DR
This study uses multicanonical Monte Carlo simulations to explore how flexible polymers crystallize, revealing structures similar to atomic clusters and identifying special 'magic length' polymers with icosahedral crystals.
Contribution
It introduces a structural classification scheme for flexible polymers' crystallization based on analogies with atomic cluster formation.
Findings
Crystalline conformations resemble Lennard-Jones ground states
Identification of 'magic length' polymers with icosahedral crystals
Proposed freezing mechanism for flexible polymers
Abstract
Investigating thermodynamic properties of liquid-solid transitions of flexible homopolymers with elastic bonds by means of multicanonical Monte Carlo simulations, we find crystalline conformations that resemble ground-state structures of Lennard-Jones clusters. This allows us to set up a structural classification scheme for finite-length flexible polymers and their freezing mechanism in analogy to atomic cluster formation. Crystals of polymers with "magic length" turn out to be perfectly icosahedral.
Peer Reviews
No public reviews on file for this paper yet. If you reviewed it on a platform where reviews are public (OpenReview, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML), you can paste yours below so the community can read it here.
Videos
No videos yet. Explain this paper in a talk, walkthrough, or lecture? Add one.