Related papers: Density effects in entangled solutions of linear a…
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…
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…
To understand the dynamical and conformational properties of deformable active agents in porous media, we computationally investigate the dynamics of linear chains and rings made of active Brownian monomers. In porous media, flexible linear…
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…
Letting free polymers diffuse from solution into a crosslinked polymer gel is often a crucial processing step in the synthesis of multiphase polymer-based gels, e.g., core-shell microgels. Here we use coarse-grained molecular dynamics…
The non-linear stress-strain relation for crosslinked polymer networks is studied using molecular dynamics simulations. Previously we demonstrated the importance of trapped entanglements in determining the elastic and relaxational…
Harnessing the topology of ring polymers as a design motif in functional nanomaterials is becoming a promising direction in the field of soft matter. For example, the ring topology of DNA plasmids prevents the relaxation of excess twist…
In this review we provide an organized summary of the theoretical and computational results which are available for polymers subject to spatial or topological constraints. Because of the interdisciplinary character of the topic, we provide…
In this paper we investigate the conformation statistics of a Gaussian chain embedded in a medium of finite size, in the presence of quenched random obstacles. The similarities and differences between the case of random obstacles and the…
The stretchability of polymeric materials is critical to many applications such as stretchable electronics and soft robotics, yet the stretchability of conventional cross-linked linear polymers is limited by the entanglements between…
The dynamics of flexible polymer molecules are often assumed to be governed by hydrodynamics of the solvent. However there is considerable evidence that internal dissipation of a polymer contributes as well. Here we investigate the dynamics…
We visualize entanglements in polymer melts using molecular dynamics simulation. A bead at an entanglement interacts persistently for long times with the non-bonded beads (those excluding the adjacent ones in the same chain). The…
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 investigate the chain conformation of ring polymers confined to a cylindrical nanochannel using both theoretical analysis and three dimensional Langevin dynamics simulations. We predict that the longitudinal size of a ring polymer scales…
We study conformational properties of diluted dumbbell polymers which consist of two rings that are attached to both ends of a linear spacer segment by using analytical methods of field theory and bead-spring coarse-grained molecular…
We present an extensive analysis of the relaxation dynamics of entangled linear polymer melts via long-time molecular dynamics simulations of a generic bead-spring model. We study the mean-squared displacements, the autocorrelation function…
Polymer chains dissolved in a solvent take random conformations due to large internal degrees of freedom and are characterized geometrically by their average shape and size. The diffusive dynamics of such large macromolecules play an…
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 study the diffusion of a linear polymer in the presence of permeable membranes without excluded volume interactions, using scaling theory and Monte Carlo simulations. We find that the average time it takes for a chain with polymerization…
A key assumption of polymer physics is that the random chains polymers extend in flow. Recent experimental evidence has shown that polymer chains compress in Couette flow in a manner counter to expectation. Here, scaling arguments developed…