Zh. Duan et Ln. Howard, DIAMOND LATTICE MODEL OF SEMICRYSTALLINE POLYETHYLENE IN THE AMORPHOUS REGION, The Journal of chemical physics, 108(13), 1998, pp. 5608-5620
The statistics of polyethylene chains in the amorphous region between
two crystallites have been computed, modeling the chains as random wal
ks on a diamond lattice with two absorbing boundaries. The probabiliti
es of trans and gauche states are considered, thereby determining some
effects of temperature, e.g. at higher temperature more loops are for
med and the average length of loops is shorter, in contrast to less ti
es formed with a longer average length. It is found that the lower bou
nd on the adjacent reentry is 79% at very high temperature and it incr
eases to 81% at about 400 K. (C) 1998 American Institute of Physics. [
S0021-9606(98)50213-9].