Related papers: Bending stiff charged polymers: the electrostatic …
We study a minimal extension of the worm-like chain to describe polypeptides having alpha-helical secondary structure. In this model presence/absence of secondary structure enters as a scalar variable that controls the local chain bending…
Mechanical stability of Ag and Cu printed and evaporated metallization lines on polymer substrates is investigated by means of monotonic tensile and cyclic bending tests. It is shown that lines which demonstrate good performance during…
Effect of bending anisotropy on a planar DNA loop, using energy minimization and neglecting entropic effects, is studied. We show that the anisotropy results in polygonal shape of the loop and increasing the anisotropy makes the edges…
Semiflexible polymer models are widely used as a paradigm to understand structural phases in biomolecules including folding of proteins. Since stable knots are not so common in real proteins, the existence of stable knots in semiflexible…
We investigate the sedimentation of knotted polymers by means of stochastic rotation dynamics, a molecular dynamics algorithm that takes hydrodynamics fully into account. We show that the sedimentation coefficient s, related to the terminal…
Ionic electro-active polymer (Nafion for example) can be used as sensor or actuator. To this end, a thin film of the water-saturated material is sandwiched between two electrodes. Water saturation causes a quasi-complete dissociation of the…
Mechanical and elastic properties of materials are among the most fundamental quantities for many engineering and industrial applications. Here, we present a formulation that is efficient and accurate for calculating the elastic and bending…
We investigate the copolymerization behavior of a two-component system into quasi-linear self-assemblies under conditions that interspecies binding is favored over identical species binding. The theoretical framework is based on a…
The conformational states of a semiflexible polymer enclosed in a compact domain of typical size $a$ are studied as stochastic realizations of paths defined by the Frenet equations under the assumption that stochastic "curvature" satisfies…
The rotational bands in nuclei with $Z \approx 100$ are investigated systematically by using a cranked shell model (CSM) with the pairing correlations treated by a particle-number conserving (PNC) method, in which the blocking effects are…
We derive the single molecule equation of state (force-extension relation) for DNA molecules bearing sliding loops and deflection defects. Analytical results are obtained in the large force limit by employing an analogy with instantons in…
The internal stability of the electron has been debated for a century at both the classical and the quantum level. Recently, a local force density balance was established for the 1s electron in the H atom, based on the energy-momentum…
We investigate the bending properties of carbon nanoribbons by combining continuum elasticity theory and tight-binding atomistic simulations. First, we develop a complete analysis of a given bended configuration through continuum mechanics.…
The symmetries of the DNA double helix require a new term in its linear response to stress: the coupling between twist and stretch. Recent experiments with torsionally-constrained single molecules give the first direct measurement of this…
We study the nonlinear propagation of electrostatic wave packets in a collisional plasma composed of strongly coupled ions and relativistically degenerate electrons. The equilibrium of ions is maintained by an effective temperature…
We present a self-contained theory for the mechanical response of DNA in single molecule experiments. Our model is based on a 1D continuum description of the DNA molecule and accounts both for its elasticity and for DNA-DNA electrostatic…
For an understanding of DNA elasticity at high mechanical loads (F > 30 pN), its helical nature needs to be taken into account, in the form of coupling between the twist and stretch degrees of freedom. The prevailing model for DNA…
We study the conformation and dynamics of a single polymer chain that is pulled by a constant force applied at its one end with the other end free. Such a situation is relevant to the growing technology of manipulating individual…
Dislocation pinning plays a vital role in the plastic behaviour of a crystalline solid. Here we report the first observation of the damped oscillations of a mobile dislocation after it gets pinned at an obstacle in the presence of a…
A coarse-grained computational model is used to investigate how the bending rigidity of a polymer under tension affects the formation of a trefoil knot. Thermodynamic integration techniques are applied to demonstrate that the free-energy…