Single polymer chains in poor solvent: using the bond fluctuation method with explicit solvent.

We use the bond fluctuation model with explicit solvent to study single polymer chains under poor solvent conditions. Static and dynamic properties of the bond fluctuation model with explicit solvent are compared with the implicit solvent model, and the Θ-temperatures are determined for both solvent models. We show that even in the very poor solvent regime, dynamics is not frozen for the explicit solvent model. We investigate some aspects of the structure of a single collapsed globule and show that rather large chain lengths are necessary to reach the scaling regime of a dense sphere. The force-extension curve of a single polymer chain under poor solvent conditions in the fixed end-to-end distance ensemble is analyzed. We find that the transition of the tadpole conformation to the stretched chain conformation is rather smooth because of fluctuation effects, which is in agreement with recent experimental results.