Related papers: Thermally activated breakdown in a simple polymer …
We study the forced rupture of adhesive contacts between monomers that are not covalently linked in a Rouse chain. When the applied force ($f$) to the chain end is less than the critical force for rupture ($f_c$), the {\it reversible}…
A constitutive model is developed for the mechanical response of elastomers at finite strains. A polymer is treated as a network of linear chains linked by permanent (chemical crosslinks) and temporary (entanglements and van der Waals…
Taking into account the nonequivalence of fixed-force and fixed-length ensembles in the weak-force regime, equations of state are derived that describe the equilibrium extension or compression of an ideal Gaussian polymer chain in response…
We consider the rupture dynamics of a homopolymer chain pulled at one end at a constant loading rate. Our model of the breakable polymer is related to the Rouse chain, with the only difference that the interaction between the monomers is…
We study the swelling of a flexible linear chain composed of active particles by analytical theory and computer simulation. Three different situations are considered: a free chain, a chain confined to an external harmonic trap, and a chain…
We investigate the folding and forced-unbinding transitions of adsorbed semiflexible polymer chains using theory and simulations. These processes describe biologically relevant phenomena that include adhesive interactions between proteins…
Polymer entanglements lead to complicated topological constraints and interactions between neighbouring chains in a dense solution or melt. Entanglements can be treated in a mean field approach, within the famous reptation model, since they…
Active polymers play a central role in many biological systems, from bacterial flagella to cellular cytoskeletons. Minimal models of semiflexible active filaments have been used to study a variety of interesting phenomena in active systems,…
Escape of active agents from metastable states is of great interest in statistical and biological physics. In this study, we investigate the escape of a flexible active ring, composed of active Brownian particles, from a flat attractive…
We have connected the dynamic fragility, namely the rapidity of the relaxation time increase upon temperature reduction, to the excess entropy and heat capacity of a large number of glass-forming polymers. The connection was obtained in a…
We report on quantitative comparisons between simulation results of a bead-spring model and mode-coupling theory calculations for the structural and conformational dynamics of a supercooled, unentangled polymer melt. We find…
The dynamics of structural relaxation in a model polymer glass subject to spatially-homogeneous, time-periodic shear deformation is investigated using molecular dynamics simulations. We study a coarse-grained bead-spring model of short…
Chemical reactions inside cells are typically subject to the effects both of the cell's confining surfaces and of the viscoelastic behavior of its contents. In this paper, we show how the outcome of one particular reaction of relevance to…
Although the stretching of polymers and biomolecules is important in numerous settings, their response when confined to two-dimensions is relatively poorly-studied. In this paper, we derive closed-form analytical expressions for the…
We consider an arbitrary translationally invariant chain model with nearest neighbors interaction and satisfying periodic boundary condition. The approach developed here allows a thermodynamic description of the chain model directly in…
The thermal degradation of a graphene-like two-dimensional triangular membrane with bonds undergoing temperature-induced scission is studied by means of Molecular Dynamics simulation using Langevin thermostat. We demonstrate that the…
Many experimentally relevant systems are quasi-one-dimensional, consisting of nearly decoupled chains. In these systems, there is a natural separation of scales between the strong intra-chain interactions and the weak interchain coupling.…
The Hamiltonian dynamics of chains of nonlinearly coupled particles is numerically investigated in two and three dimensions. Simple, off-lattice homopolymer models are used to represent the interparticle potentials. Time averages of…
We present a model for semiflexible polymers in Hamiltonian formulation which interpolates between a Rouse chain and worm-like chain. Both models are realized as limits for the parameters. The model parameters can also be chosen to match…
A polymer-chain network is a collection of interconnected polymer-chains, made themselves of the repetition of a single pattern called a monomer. Our first main result establishes that, for a class of models for polymer-chain networks, the…