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Many polymers, whose properties favor the formation of locally ordered structures, crystallize at low temperatures. However, the connectivity of the long chain molecules usually hinders the formation of perfect crystals and leads to semicrystalline materials. For these heterogeneous materials one would like to better understand the pathways leading to a particular composition of crystalline and amorphous regions as well as the influence of external control parameters on the resulting structures.
The figure shows the formation of a crystal lamella as observed with molecular dynamics at low temperatures. The simulation box contains 500 chains of length N=400. Right panel: Visualization of 13 chains of the first crystalline domaine. The crystallization domain is observed to extend over several chain diameters.