A simple and fast method for evaluating the athermal limit of semirigid liquid polymers

A simple method is reported allowing the fast evaluation of the athermal li mit that is implicitly present within the set of equations recently propose d by Jonah, Brostow and Hess, dealing with the anisotropic-isotropic equili bria of single monodisperse or nearly monodisperse semirigid liquid polymer s, including polymer liquid crystals. We have found an athermal limit depen dent on the degree of rigidity theta of the given semirigid liquid polymer (theta being the fraction of its monomeric units belonging to rigid rodlike sequences within each semiflexible polymeric chain) and marked off by crit ical lengths eta(ai) of the rigid sequences, giving rise to non-finite asym ptotic values of the anisotropic-isotropic temperatures.