ENERGY-TRANSFER IN POLYMERS IN DILUTE-SOLUTIONS

Energy transfer in polymers involves not only steps along the chain bu t also between sites which are far away along the chain's backbone, bu t which are near each other in Euclidean space. In the present note we study exciton trapping on polymers, modelled as Gaussian chains. The trapping sites along the chain are fixed, but the chain's conformation in Euclidean space changes according to Orwoll-Stockmeyer dynamics. O ur Monte-Carlo simulations show that such structural changes influence trapping strongly, even if they are relatively slow on the time scale of the hopping motion. We explain this based on a semi-quantitative a pproach, using ideas from renewal theory. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B. V. All rights reserved.