Scaling at the rod-to-flexible chain crossover in the stiff limit

The authors critically examine the present theoretical understanding of the conformational rod-to-flexible chain crossover of a linear chain polymer in dilute solution with a good solvent. There is good evidence for weak universality in this crossover while strong universality seems unlikely from available evidence. In addition, this system should exhibit a second crossover from a Gaussian to an excluded volume. They present a scaling hypothesis for the behaviour of this second crossover and compare with the initial results of numerical simulations and with the experiment of Murakami et al.