Intramolecular Crystal Nucleation of Polymers Containing Sequence Defects

Sequence defects of polymers such as the short branches of polyethylene as well as the stereo-isomers of polypropylene suppress the crystallinity for a broad application from plastics to elastomers. We performed dynamic Monte Carlo simulations of single linear and cyclic polymer chains containing a few of sequence defects. The free energy curves of crystallization/melting show that the sequence defects generally suppress the melting point from homopolymers, but affect little to the kinetic barrier of intramolecular crystal nucleation. In addition, the chain ends play the similar role with the sequence defects in crystallization. Our results shed light onto the microscopic mechanism of sequence-length segregation upon crystallization of statistical copolymers.
References:
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