Related papers: Dynamics of Self-Threading Ring Polymers in a Gel
We perform large scale three-dimensional molecular dynamics simulations of unlinked and unknotted ring polymers diffusing through a background gel, here a three-dimensional cubic lattice. Taking advantage of this architecture, we propose a…
Diffusion of long ring polymers in a melt is much slower than the reorganization of their internal structures. While direct evidences for entanglements have not been observed in the long ring polymers unlike linear polymer melts, threading…
Elucidating the physics of a concentrated suspension of ring polymers, or of an ensemble of ring polymers in a complex environment, is an important outstanding question in polymer physics. Many of the characteristic features of these…
Using extensive molecular dynamics simulations, we investigate the slowing down of dynamics in a 3D system of ring polymers by varying the ambient pressure and the stiffness of the rings. Our study demonstrates that the stiffness of the…
The static and dynamic properties of ring polymers in concentrated solutions remains one of the last deep unsolved questions in Polymer Physics. At the same time, the nature of the glass transition in polymeric systems is also not well…
In this paper we study the role of topology in DNA gel electrophoresis experiments via molecular dynamics simulations. The gel is modelled as a 3D array of obstacles from which half edges are removed at random with probability p, thereby…
Understanding how topological constraints affect the dynamics of polymers in solution is at the basis of any polymer theory and it is particularly needed for melts of rings. These polymers fold as crumpled and space-filling objects and,…
In the presented work we study, by means of numerical simulations, the behaviour of a suspension of active ring polymers in the bulk and under lateral confinement. When changing the separation between the confining planes and the polymers'…
Ring polymers are prevalent in natural and engineered systems, including circular bacterial DNA, crown ethers for cation chelation, and mechanical nanoswitches. The morphology and dynamics of ring polymers are governed by the chemistry and…
We study structural properties of a ring polymeric melt confined in a film in comparison to a linear counterpart using molecular dynamics simulations. Local structure orderings of ring and linear polymers in the vicinity of the surface are…
We use computer simulations to study the (driven) dynamics of a charged polymer in a disordered medium, thus mimicking the setting used in gel electrophoresis. In agreement with experiments, we find that inside the gel the mobility of the…
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…
The relationship between polymer topology and bulk rheology remains a key question in soft matter physics. Architecture-specific constraints (or threadings) are thought to control the dynamics of ring polymers in ring-linear blends, which…
Ring polymers are characterized by topology-specific entanglements called threadings. In the limit of large rings, it is conjectured that a "topological glass" should emerge due to the proliferation of threadings. In this study, we used…
Ring polymers exhibit unique flow properties due to their closed chain topology. Despite recent progress, we have not yet achieved a full understanding of the nonequilibrium flow behavior of rings in nondilute solutions where intermolecular…
The effects of entanglement in solutions and melts of unknotted ring polymers have been addressed by several theoretical and numerical studies. The system properties have been typically profiled as a function of ring contour length at fixed…
Dynamical properties of a long polymer ring in a melt of unknotted and unconcatenated rings are calculated. We re-examine and generalize the well known model of a ring confined to a lattice of topological obstacles in the light of the…
Advances in controlled polymerization have enabled the synthesis of mechanically interlocked polymers like molecular knots and linear[n]catenane. These aesthetic macromolecules with unique topological constraints in the form of mechanical…
Motivated by recent observations that non-concatenated ring polymers in their dense solution exhibit a glass-like dynamics, we propose a free volume description of the motion of such rings based on the notion of topological volume. We first…
In this paper, we employ Molecular Dynamics computer simulations to study and compare the statics and dynamics of linear and circular (ring) polymer chains in entangled solutions of different densities. While we confirm that linear chain…