Related papers: Confinement of knotted polymers in a slit
We present results from molecular dynamics simulations of strictly two-dimensional (2D) polymer melts and thin polymer films in a slit geometry of thickness of the order of the radius of gyration. We find that the dynamics of the 2D melt is…
The non-equilibrium structural and dynamical properties of a flexible polymer tethered to a reflecting wall and subject to oscillatory linear flow are studied by numerical simulations. Polymer is confined in two dimensions and is modeled as…
The presence of slipknots in configurations of proteins and DNA has been shown to affect their functionality, or alter it entirely. Historically, polymers are modeled as polygonal chains in space. As an alternative to space curves, we…
Mechanically bonded membranes of interlocked ring polymers are a significant generalization of conventional elastic sheets, where connectivity is provided by covalent bonding, and represent a promising class of topological meta-materials.…
The vibrational dynamics of a model polymer glass is studied by Molecular Dynamics simulations. The focus is on the "soft" monomers with high participation to the lower-frequency vibrational modes contributing to the thermodynamic anomalies…
We report on the geometry and mechanics of knotted stiff strings. We discuss both closed and open knots. Our two main results are: (i) Their equilibrium energy as well as the equilibrium tension for open knots depend on the type of knot as…
Friction between ring-polymer brushes at melt densities sliding past each other are studied using extensive course-grained molecular dynamics simulations and scaling arguments, and the results are compared to the friction between…
We consider directed semiflexible polymers embedded in a fluctuating surface which is governed by either surface tension or bending rigidity. The attractive interactions induced by the fluctuations of the surface reduce the rigidity of the…
Chiral polymers are ubiquitous in nature and in the cellular context they are often found in association with membranes. Here we show that surface bound polymers with an intrinsic twist and anisotropic bending stiffness can exhibit a sharp…
Motivated by recent nanofluidics experiments, we use Brownian dynamics and Monte Carlo simulations to study the conformation, organization and dynamics of two polymer chains confined to a single box-like cavity. The polymers are modeled as…
Equilibration of polymer melts containing highly entangled long polymer chains in confinement or with free surfaces is a challenge for computer simulations. We approach this problem by first studying polymer melts based on the soft-sphere…
Common experience tells us that a knot significantly weakens the polymer strand in which it is tied, which in turn leads to more facile chain rupture under tensile loading. Using first-principles molecular dynamics calculations we describe…
In this paper, we analyze the effect of geometrical constraint on the conformational properties of an infinitely long linear semiflexible polymer chain confined in-between two constraints under good solvent condition in two dimensions. The…
We explore the effect of an attractive interaction between parallel-aligned polymers, which are perpendicularly grafted on a substrate. Such an attractive interaction could be due to, e.g., reversible cross-links. The competition between…
We study the equilibrium shapes of prime and composite knots confined to two dimensions. Using rigorous scaling arguments we show that, due to self-avoiding effects, the topological details of prime knots are localised on a small portion of…
We present an analytical and computational study characterizing the structural and dynamical properties of an active filament confined in cylindrical channels. We first outline the effects of the interplay between confinement and polar…
We employ a first principles, force-level approach to self-consistently construct the anharmonic tube confinement field for entangled fluids of rigid needles and for primitive-path (PP) level chains in two limiting situations where chain…
In this paper, we study the equilibrium properties of polymer chains end-tethered to a fluid membrane. The loss of conformational entropy of the polymer results in an inhomogeneous pressure field that we calculate for gaussian chains. We…
A variational framework is developed to examine the equilibrium states of a semi-flexible polymer that is constrained to lie on a fixed surface. As an application the confinement of a closed polymer loop of fixed length $2\pi R$ within a…
Topological constraints (TCs) between polymers determine the behaviour of complex fluids such as creams, oils and plastics. Most of the polymer solutions used every day life employ linear chains; their behaviour is accurately captured by…