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Kinetic Selection of Chain Folds under Entanglement Constraint.

Renkuan Cao¹, Fan Peng¹, Hao Sun¹

¹National Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory, State Key Laboratory of Advanced Glass Materials, Anhui Provincial Engineering Research Center for Advanced Functional Polymer Films, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230029, China.

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Summary

Understanding polymer crystallization is key. We found an along-chain force drives polymer chains to disentangle and form tight folds, with fold fraction scaling inversely with entanglement length.

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Area of Science:

Polymer Science
Materials Science
Computational Chemistry

Background:

Polymer crystallization involves folding long-chain molecules.
Entanglement topological constraints pose a significant challenge to achieving tight folds.

Purpose of the Study:

Investigate the mechanism of polymer chain folding under entanglement constraints.
Identify factors governing tight-fold formation in polymer crystallization.

Main Methods:

Utilized molecular dynamics simulations.
Analyzed polymer chain behavior and movement dynamics.

Main Results:

Observed directional reptation of polymer chains toward the growth front.
Demonstrated an along-chain force facilitating disentanglement and tight-fold formation.
Revealed a linear scaling between tight-fold fraction and the reciprocal of entanglement length.

Conclusions:

Entanglement length and chain rigidity regulate tight-fold formation.
Entanglement limits the scale of folding, while rigidity affects bending difficulty.