Phase diagram and effective shape of semi-flexible colloidal rods and biopolymers
Soft Condensed Matter
2015-05-27 v1 Biological Physics
Abstract
We study suspensions of semi-flexible colloidal rods and biopolymers using an Onsager-type second-virial functional for a segmented-chain model. For suspensions of thin and thick fd virus particles we calculate phase diagrams in quantitative agreement with experimental observations, and we find their effective state-point dependent shape to be much shorter and thicker than the actual shape. We also calculate the stretching of worm-like micelles in a host fd virus solution, again finding agreement with experiments. For both systems, our results show that the fd virus stiffness can play a key role in system behavior.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1101.2196,
title = {Phase diagram and effective shape of semi-flexible colloidal rods and biopolymers},
author = {Matthew Dennison and Marjolein Dijkstra and Rene van Roij},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1101.2196},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
10 pages, 6 figures