Abstract
Solution dynamics of associating polymer chains with many (N ≫ 1) randomly distributed strongly interacting groups (stickers) are considered theoretically. The stickers tend to associate pairwise, and the polymer backbone is semirigid and soluble. It is shown that there exists a finite concentration range where the polymers form a reversible network with a virtually frozen structure: in this regime both the stress relaxation time and the viscosity exponentially increase with N and with c.