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The presence of ordered structures such as helices in collapsed states of polymer chains is still an open question challenging physics and biology. In this work, we present a potential model for polymer chains with monomers that are not…
This paper studies a polymer chain in the vicinity of a linear interface separating two immiscible solvents. The polymer consists of random monomer types, while the interface carries random charges. Both the monomer types and the charges…
Packings of macroscopic granular chains capture some of the essential aspects of molecular polymer systems and have been suggested as a paradigm to understand the physics on a molecular scale. However, here we demonstrate that the…
We analyze the structural behavior of a single polymer chain grafted to an attractive, flexible surface. Our model is composed of a coarse-grained bead-and-spring polymer and a tethered membrane. By means of extensive parallel tempering…
The linear viscoelastic response of flexible polymer solutions in the dilute and semidilute unentangled regimes is investigated using Brownian dynamics simulations. The relaxation modulus and dynamic moduli are computed over a wide range of…
This study reports a general scenario for the out-of-equilibrium features of collapsing polymeric architectures. We use molecular dynamics simulations to characterize the coarsening kinetics, in bad solvent, for several macromolecular…
Discontinuous shear-thickening in dense suspensions naturally emerges from the activation of frictional forces by shear flow in non-Brownian systems close to jamming. Yet, this physical picture is incomplete as most experiments study soft…
The nonlinear rheological properties of dense colloidal suspensions under steady shear are discussed within a first principles approach. It starts from the Smoluchowski equation of interacting Brownian particles in a given shear flow,…
Although it has been established that the multi-chain slip-spring (MCSS) model can reproduce entangled polymer dynamics, the effects of model parameters have not been fully elucidated yet. In this study, we systematically investigated the…
A copolymer is a chain of repetitive units (monomers) that are almost identical, but they differ in their degree of affinity for certain solvents. This difference leads to striking phenomena when the polymer fluctuates in a nonhomogeneous…
The collapse and swelling behavior of a generic homopolymer is studied using implicit-solvent, explicit-cosolvent Langevin dynamics computer simulations for varying interaction strengths. The systematic investigation reveals that polymer…
We investigate experimentally and theoretically thin layers of colloid particles held adjacent to a solid substrate by gravity. Epifluorescence, confocal, and holographic microscopy, combined with Monte Carlo and hydrodynamic simulations,…
Dynamic density functionals (DDFs) are popular tools for studying the dynamical evolution of inhomogeneous polymer systems. Here, we present a systematic evaluation of a set of diffusive DDF theories by comparing their predictions with data…
We study the friction of a poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) rubber network sliding, at low velocity, on a substrate on which PDMS chains are end-tethered. We thus clearly evidence the contribution to friction of the pull-out mechanism of…
We examine the condensed states of a simple semiflexible copolymer in which there are two monomer types that are immiscible with each other and with the solvent. Although this is similar to the well known problem of collapse for a…
Collapse of the polymer chain upon the sharp decrease of solvent quality is studied. During collapse, any pair of polymer units appearing in a sufficiently close vicinity in space has the possibility with a certain probability to form an…
Inspired by recent experiments on the spatial organization of bacterial chromosomes, we consider a type of "bottle brush" polymer consisting of a flexible backbone chain, to which flexible side loops are connected. We show that such a model…
In this paper, we present a theory to efficiently deal with mechanical properties of heterogeneous polymer chain in free space and the central problem is to evaluate the diffusion equation and orientation-orientation correlation function,…
We demonstrate that a semiflexible bundle of wormlike chains exhibits a state-dependent bending stiffness that alters fundamentally its scaling behavior with respect to the standard wormlike chain. We explore the equilibrium conformational…
The slip phenomena in thin polymer films confined by either flat or periodically corrugated surfaces are investigated by molecular dynamics and continuum simulations. For atomically flat surfaces and weak wall-fluid interactions, the shear…