Related papers: Segregated structure of ring polymer melts near th…
We present a detailed account of a recently proposed phenomenological theory for noncatenated ring polymer melts (Phys. Rev. Lett. 106, 167802 (2011)). A basic assumption lies in the implementation of the noncatenation constraint via the…
Molecular dynamics simulations were conducted to investigate the structural properties of melts of nonconcatenated ring polymers and compared to melts of linear polymers. The longest rings were composed of N=1600 monomers per chain which…
Two ring polymers close to each other in space may be either in a segregated phase if there is a strong repulsion between monomers in the polymers, or intermingle in a mixed phase if there is a strong attractive force between the monomers.…
Molecular dynamics simulations were conducted to investigate the dynamic properties of melts of nonconcatenated ring polymers and compared to melts of linear polymers. The longest rings were composed of N=1600 monomers per chain which…
Ring polymers remain a major challenge to our current understanding of polymer dynamics. Experimental results are difficult to interpret because of the uncertainty in the purity and dispersity of the sample. Using both equilibrium and…
The conformational statistics of ring polymers in melts or dense solutions is strongly affected by their quenched microscopic topological state. The effect is particularly strong for untangled (i.e. non-concatenated and unknotted) rings,…
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,…
During the life cycle of bacterial cells the non-mixing of the two ring-shaped daughter genomes is an important prerequisite for the cell division process. Mimicking the environments inside highly crowded biological cells, we study the…
We present results from molecular dynamics simulations of a spherically confined neutral polymer in the presence of crowding agents, studying polymer shapes and conformations as a function of the confining potential, solvent quality and the…
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…
It has been shown that under high cylindrical confinement, two ring polymers with excluded volume interactions between monomers, segregate to two halves of the cylinder to maximize their entropy. In contrast, two ring polymers remain mixed…
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…
Using a theoretical model we show that ideal ring polymers are stronger depletants than ideal linear polymers of equal radii of gyration, but not of equal hydrodynamic radii. The difference in the depletion-induced force profile is largely…
We study of the dynamics of ring polymers confined to diffuse in a background gel at low concentrations. We do this in order to probe the inter-play between topology and dynamics in ring polymers. We develop an algorithm that takes into…
Conformations of a crowded neutral semiflexible polymer under confinement near an attractive wall are studied via coarse-grained simulations. We study the effects of the interplay of the length of the polymer, bending rigidity, and the…
We report simulation results on melts of entangled linear polymers confined in a free-standing thin film. We study how the geometric constraints imposed by the confinement alter the entanglement state of the system compared to the…
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…
The size of rings (also called cyclic polymers) in bidisperse blends of chemically identical rings is analyzed by computer simulations. Data of entangled ring blends and blends of interpenetrating rings are compared and it is shown that the…
Confinement is a versatile and well-established tool to study the properties of polymers either to understand biological processes or to develop new nano-biomaterials. We investigate the conformations of a semiflexible polymer ring in weak…
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'…