Semi-flexible hydrogen-bonded and non-hydrogen bonded lattice polymers

Abstract

We investigate the addition of stiffness to the lattice model of hydrogen-bonded polymers in two and three dimensions. We find that, in contrast to polymers that interact via a homogeneous short-range interaction, the collapse transition is unchanged by any amount of stiffness: this supports the physical argument that hydrogen bonding already introduces an effective stiffness. Contrary to possible physical arguments, favouring bends in the polymer does not return the model's behaviour to that comparable with the semi-flexible homogeneous interaction model, where the canonical θ-point occurs for a range of parameter values. In fact, for sufficiently large bending energies the crystal phase di..