Surface effects in the crystallization process of elastic flexible polymers

Investigating thermodynamic properties of liquid–solid transitions of flexible homopolymers with elastic bonds by means of multicanonical Monte Carlo simulations, we find crystalline conformations that resemble ground-state structures of Lennard-Jones clusters. This allows us to set up a structural classification scheme for finite-length flexible polymers and their freezing mechanism in analogy to atomic cluster formation. Crystals of polymers with ‘magic length’ turn out to be perfectly icosahedral.