Phase Behavior of Coarse-Grained Single-Chain Models

1 Phase Behavior of Coarse-Grained Single-Chain Models 

Manipulation of single polymer chains has become a major direction of research in polymer science because such experiments can yield valuable insight into the relationship between the chemical structure and physical properties of macromolecules [1-3]. Such experiments do also depend on the conditions of the environment of the polymers, e.g., in an experiment where colloidal beads attached to the chain ends of a biopolymer are moved away from each other with laser tweezers. Then, the extension X) versus force (/) relation will depend on the quality of the solvent in which the polymer has been dissolved. Also, the structure of a polymer adsorbed on a substrate from solution will depend on the solvent quality [4, 5]. 

The models discussed so far assume that the macromolecules are fully flexible down to the smallest scales that are considered. This assumption is often not a good 

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