1998/12/05 by Jonathan Doye, Jonathan P. K. Doye, Daan Frenkel · 1 citation
Chemical Engineering · Chemistry · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Physical and Chemical Molecular Interactions #Polymer crystallization and properties #Rheology and Fluid Dynamics Studies #cond-mat
paper · pdf · doi:10.1063/1.478613
published as J. Chem. Phys., 110, 7073-7086 (1999) · 15 pages, 13 figures, revtex
arxiv created 1998/12/05 · openalex publication_date 1999/04/08 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Recent work on the mechanism of polymer crystallization has led to a proposal for the mechanism of thickness selection which differs from those proposed by the surface nucleation theory of Lauritzen and Hoffman and the entropic barrier model of Sadler and Gilmer. This has motivated us to reexamine the model used by Sadler and Gilmer. We again find a fixed-point attractor which describes the dynamical convergence of the crystal thickness to a value just larger than the minimum stable thickness, lmin. This convergence arises from the combined effect of two constraints on the length of stems in a layer: it is unfavorable for a stem to be shorter than lmin and for a stem to overhang the edge of the previous layer. The relationship between this new mechanism and the explanation given by Sadler and Gilmer in terms of an entropic barrier is discussed. We also examine the behavior of the Sadler-Gilmer model when an energetic contribution from chain folds is included.