Melts of semi-flexible, living polymers: a lattice model

Abstract

A lattice model for the ordering of melts of "living polymers", incorporating semi-flexibility, vacancies and open ends, is studied in two dimensions by Monte Carlo simulations and the analysis of exactly solvable limits. We present evidence for high-temperature disordered, and low-temperature ordered phases separated by a continuous transition. If the density of open ends is small, strong crossover effects, arising because of the proximity of the power law phase in the F-model limit of our model, dominate our simulations. The distribution of polymer lengths always has an exponential tail; however, in the crossover regime, it decays with a power law for small and intermediate lengths. The relevance of our study to other lattice models for melts of semi-flexible polymers is discussed.