Neighbor Interactions and Internal Rotations in Polymer Molecules. III. Statistics of Interdependent Rotations and Their Application to the Polyethylene Molecule

Abstract

The internal rotations around the skeletal bonds of polyethylene are hindered due to interaction between the neighboring hydrogens. Since second and higher orders of neighborhood are not negligible, the internal rotations are interdependent. The statistics of such interdependent rotations is developed and applied to obtain the configurational partition function and the mean‐square end‐to‐end distance of the macromolecule.