Diamond lattice model of semicrystalline polyethylene in the amorphous region

Z. Duan, L. Howard

The statistics of polyethylene chains in the amorphous region between two crystallites have been computed, modeling the chains as random walks on a diamond lattice with two absorbing boundaries. The probabilities of trans and gauche states are considered, thereby determining some effects of temperature, e.g. at higher temperature more loops are formed and the average length of loops is shorter, in contrast to less ties formed with longer average length. It is also found that the lower bound on the adjacent reentry is 49% at very high temperature and it increases to 55% at about 400K, assuming the interface normal to the crystalline chains in the crystal.