Stability of phase transitions in polymers with bistable unit cells

Soliton-like switching regimes are investigated for chains of bistable unit cells with energy non-degenerate ground states. It is shown that there is a set of equilibrium soliton velocities in the chains of bistable units with complicated internal structure. There are two essentially different regions of soliton initial velocities, so that the low external influence can cause switch-on phase transition and the strong external influence may switch-off the processes. The dynamics of soliton–antisoliton interaction in such a media is also investigated too. It is shown that in this case phase transition caused by double soliton excitation is more stable.