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Updated: Aug 2, 2026

Synthesis of Cyclic Polymers and Characterization of Their Diffusive Motion in the Melt State at the Single Molecule Level
Published on: September 26, 2016
Dissociation in a polymerization model of homochirality
A Brandenburg1, A C Andersen, M Nilsson
1Nordita, Blegdamsvej 17, DK-2100, Copenhagen Ø, Denmark. brandenb@nordita.dk
Abstract:
A fully self-contained model of homochirality is presented that contains the effects of both polymerization and dissociation. The dissociation fragments are assumed to replenish the substrate from which new monomers can grow and undergo new polymerization. The mean length of isotactic polymers is found to grow slowly with the normalized total number of corresponding building blocks. Alternatively, if one assumes that the dissociation fragments themselves can polymerize further, then this corresponds to a strong source of short polymers, and an unrealistically short average length of only 3. By contrast, without dissociation, isotactic polymers becomes infinitely long.
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