Related papers: Polymer segregation under confinement: Free energy…
Recently, nanofluidics experiments have been used to characterize the behavior of single DNA molecules confined to narrow slits etched with arrays of nanopits. Analysis of the experimental data relies on analytical estimates of the…
We use the method of dimensional reduction to show that a branching polymer with excluded volume interaction confined between two flat plates has, in the thermodynamic limit, a confinement free energy and density profile that is the same as…
Single three dimensional polymers confined to a slab, i.e. to the region between two parallel plane walls, are studied by Monte Carlo simulations. They are described by $N$-step walks on a simple cubic lattice confined to the region $1 \le…
We present Monte Carlo computer simulations for melts of semiflexible randomly knotted and randomly concatenated ring polymers on the fcc lattice and in slit confinement. Through systematic variation of the slit width at fixed melt density,…
Based upon kinetic Monte Carlo simulations of crystallization in a simple polymer model we present a new picture of the mechanism by which the thickness of lamellar polymer crystals is constrained to a value close to the minimum…
Computer simulations are used to characterize the entropic force of one or more polymers tethered to the tip of a hard conical object that interact with a nearby hard flat surface. Pruned-enriched-Rosenbluth-method (PERM) Monte Carlo…
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…
Confinement can have a dramatic effect on the behavior of all sorts of particulate systems and it therefore is an important phenomenon in many different areas of physics and technology. Here, we investigate the role played by the softness…
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…
Recent developments of microscopic mechanical experiments allow the manipulation of individual polymer molecules in two main ways: \textit{uniform} stretching by external forces and \textit{non-uniform} stretching by external fields. Many…
We report molecular dynamics simulations of the segregation of two overlapping chains in cylindrical confinement. We find that the entropic repulsion between the chains can be sufficiently strong to cause segregation on a time scale that is…
We describe a simple Monte Carlo simulation method to calculate the free-energy cost of localizing a single monomer of a polymer confined to a cavity. The localization position is chosen to be on the inside surface of the confining cavity.…
It has been revealed by mean-field theories and computer simulations that the nature of the collapse transition of a polymer is influenced by its bending stiffness $\epsilon_{\rm b}$. In two dimensions, a recent analytical work demonstrated…
We consider a fully directed self-avoiding walk model on a cubic lattice to mimic the conformations of an infinitely long confined flexible polymer chain; and the confinement condition is achieved by two parallel athermal plates. The…
We present computer simulations of a simple bead-spring model for polymer melts with intramolecular barriers. By systematically tuning the strength of the barriers, we investigate their role on the glass transition. Dynamic observables are…
The interplay of topological constraints, excluded volume interactions, persistence length and dynamical entanglement length in solutions and melts of linear chains and ring polymers is investigated by means of kinetic Monte Carlo…
We analyze static properties of a strongly confined semiflexible polymer, i.e. either trapped in a closed space or compressed by external forces, in an athermal solvent. Like a flexible polymer case, we can resort to an analogy with the…
We apply results derived in other contexts for the spectrum of the Laplace operator in curved geometries to the study of an ideal polymer chain confined to a spherical annulus in arbitrary space dimension D and conclude that the free energy…
Experiments using nanofluidic devices have proven effective in characterizing the physical properties of polymers confined to small cavities. Two recent studies using such methods examined the organization and dynamics of two DNA molecules…
We present a method to generate realistic, three-dimensional networks of crosslinked semiflexible polymers. The free energy of these networks is obtained from the force-extension characteristics of the individual polymers and their…