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Using a nearly monodisperse high molar mass poly (N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAM) sample, we successfully made the conformation change of individual PNIPAM chains from a coil to a fully collapsed stable single chain globule in an extremely dilute aqueous solution, which enabled us to study for the first time the globule-to-coil transition of a single homopolymer chain in solution. A comparison to the coil-to-globule and the globule-to-coil transitions revealed a hysteresis in the globule-to-coil transition. Our results also confirmed the existence of two additional thermodynamically stable states between the coil and the globule states, namely, the crumpled coil and the molten globule.
Wu et al. (Mon,) studied this question.