Related papers: Fluctuation driven height reduction of crosslinked…
Conformations of a single-component bottle-brush polymer with a fully flexible backbone under poor solvent conditions are studied by molecular-dynamics simulations, using a coarse-grained bead-spring model with side chains of up to N=40…
The size-dependent liquid-vapor surface tension controls phase change, wetting, and transport at nanoscales, yet its first curvature correction, the Tolman length, remains difficult to determine. We develop a thermodynamic and…
Obtaining reliable estimates of the statistical properties of complex macromolecules by computer simulation is a task that requires high computational effort as well as the development of highly efficient simulation algorithms. We present…
Using analytical calculations and computer simulations we consider both the lateral diffusion of a membrane protein and the fluctuation spectrum of the membrane in which the protein is embedded. The membrane protein interacts with the…
Fujiyabu et al. have experimentally reported that mixing of 3-arm star prepolymers into 4-arm analog improves the toughness of the resultant polymer networks compared to the base network composed of 4-arm star polymers only. For the…
Protein brushes not only play a key role in the functionality of neurofilaments but also have wide applications in biomedical materials. Here, we investigate the effect of ionic strength on the morphology of protein brushes using a…
The mechanical properties of a thin, planar material, perfused by an embedded flow network, can be changed locally and globally by the fluid transport and storage, resulting in small or large-scale deformation, such as out-of-plane…
Initial volume fluctuation (VF) arising from the participant fluctuation would be the background which should be subtracted experimentally from the measured higher-order cumulants. We study the validity of the Volume Fluctuation Correction…
We develop a novel biased Monte-Carlo simulation technique to measure the force-extension curves and the distribution function of the extension of fluctuating filaments stretched by external force. The method is applicable for arbitrary…
Chain-like macromolecules in solution, whether biological or synthetic, transform from an extended conformation to a compact one when temperature or other system parameters change. This collapse transition is relevant in various phenomena,…
We propose the quantitative mean-field theory of mechanical unfolding of a globule formed by long flexible homopolymer chain collapsed in poor solvent and subjected to extensional deformation. We demonstrate that depending on the degree of…
We extend classical Flory-Rehner theory for the expansion and compression of porous materials such as cross-linked polymer networks. The theory includes volume exclusion, affinity with the solvent, and finite stretching of the polymer…
The one-dimensional polynuclear growth model with external sources at edges is studied. The height fluctuation at the origin is known to be given by either the Gaussian, the GUE Tracy-Widom distribution, or certain distributions called…
When injected through a contraction, high molecular weight polymer solutions exhibit a sharp increase of apparent viscosity which originates from stretching polymer chains above a critical extension rate. This chain stretching can also…
We investigate interfacial properties between two highly incompatible polymers of different stiffness. The extensive Monte Carlo simulations of the binary polymer melt yield detailed interfacial profiles and the interfacial tension via an…
We propose and study a simplified model for the surface and bulk structures of crosslinked polymer gels, into which voids are introduced through templating by surfactant micelles. Such systems were recently studied by Atomic Force…
Complex flow fields govern the deformation of polymers in various manufacturing processes. However, high flow rates may trigger reaction events (i.e., bond breaking or undesirable reaction of mechanophores) in raw polymeric materials,…
We suggest a simple model for reversible cross-links, binding and unbinding to/from a network of semiflexible polymers. The resulting frequency dependent response of the network to an applied shear is calculated via Brownian dynamics…
Recent experimental results suggest that the E. coli chromosome feels a self-attracting interaction of osmotic origin, and is condensed in foci by bridging interactions. Motivated by these findings, we explore a generic modeling framework…
We predict the thermodynamic and structural behavior of solutions of long cross-linked filaments. We find that at the mean field level, the entropy of self-assembled junctions induces an effective attraction between the filaments that can…