Coil-stretch transition of polymers with excluded volume

We compute, by Monte Carlo techniques, the mean-square end-to-end distance of self-avoiding simple cubic lattice chains. In many respects this model resembles a polymer chain in an elongational flow field. Such a chain is observed to undergo a transition from a coiled to a stretched structure as the flow rate increases. Two facts appear to be quite certain: firstly the coil-stretch transition of freely draining chains is sensitive to solvent quality and secondly the insensitivity of non-draining chains to solvent quality cannot be ascribed to attenuation of the excluded volume effect in partially stretched coils.