TEMPERATURE-INDUCED CONFORMATIONAL TRANSITIONS FOR FLEXIBLE SYNTHETIC-POLYMERS IN SOLUTION

Herein we report experimental results on a wide variety of common, lin ear flexible polymers in solution in an attempt to confirm prior repor ts of abrupt 'conformational transitions' for these materials. Such tr ansitions have been claimed by numerous authors, and they have been re ported to reflect sudden conformational changes brought about, in most cases, by varying temperature. Methods used both in our work and earl ier work include viscometry, differential refractometry and size exclu sion chromatography. We observed no evidence of such conformational tr ansitions and conclude that in reality such events are probably rare. We believe that many prior reports of such sudden changes in shape/siz e are probably mistaken because of the failure of some authors to take into account realistic experimental errors during data analysis and i nterpretation.