  We study the spontaneous nucleation and crystallization of linear and cyclic
chains of flexibly connected hard spheres using extensive molecular dynamics
simulations. To this end, we present a novel event-driven molecular dynamics
simulation method, which is easy to implement and very efficient. We find that
the nucleation rates are predominately determined by the number of bonds per
sphere in the system, rather than the precise details of the chain topology,
chain length, and polymer composition. O ur results thus show that the crystal
nucleation rate of bead chains can be enhanced by adding monomers to the
system. In addition, we find that the resulting crystal n uclei contain
significantly more face-centered-cubic than hexagonal-close-packed ordered
particles. More surprisingly, the resulting crystal nuclei possess a range of
crystal morphologies including structures with a five-fold symmetry.
