Related papers: Measuring topological constraint relaxation in rin…
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 non-concatenated unknotted rings, which are known to…
A comparative simulation study of polymer brushes formed by grafting at a planar surface either flexible linear polymers (chain length $N_L$) or (non-catenated) ring polymers (chain length $N_R=2 N_L$) is presented. Two distinct off-lattice…
The mechanical properties of polymer knots under stretching in a bad or good solvent are investigated by applying a given force $F$ to a point of the knot while keeping another point fixed. The Monte Carlo sampling of the polymer…
Polymer melts undergoing large deformation by uniaxial elongation are studied by molecular dynamics simulations of bead-spring chains in melts. Applying a primitive path analysis to strongly deformed polymer melts, the role of topological…
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,…
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…
The interplay of geometrical and topological entanglement in semiflexible knotted polymer rings confined inside a spherical cavity is investigated using advanced numerical methods. By using stringent and robust algorithms for locating…
Ring, or cyclic, polymers have unique properties compared to linear polymers, due to their topologically closed structure that has no beginning or end. Experimental measurements on molecular ring polymers are challenging due to their…
The paper presents a short overview of the theoretical, numerical and experimental works on the critical behavior of a dilute polymer solution of long-flexible polymer chains confined in semi-infinite space restricted by a surface or in a…
In this work the thermodynamic properties of short polymer knots (up to 120 segments) defined on a simple cubic lattice are studied with the help of the Wang-Landau Monte Carlo algorithm. The sampling process is performed using pivot…
Gels made of telechelic polymers connected by reversible crosslinkers are a versatile design platform for biocompatible viscoelastic materials. Their linear response to a step strain displays a fast, near-exponential relaxation when using…
We present a novel mechanism for resolving the mechanical rigidity of nanoscopic circular polymers that flow in a complex environment. The emergence of a regime of negative differential mobility induced by topological interactions between…
The field theory approach to the statistical mechanics of a system of N polymer rings linked together is generalized to the case of links that have a fixed number $2s$ of maxima and minima. Such kind of links are called plats and appear for…
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 modification of dominant coherent structures that extend through the log-region of a drag reduced turbulent boundary layer is studied via examination of two-point correlations from time-resolved particle-image-velocimetry. Measurements…
The predictions of the polymer mode coupling theory for the finite size corrections to the transport coefficients of entangled polymeric systems are tested in comparisons with various experimental data. It is found that quantitative…
The viscoelastic relaxation time of a polymer solution is often measured using Capillary Breakup Extensional Rheometry (CaBER) where a droplet is placed between two plates which are pulled apart to form a thinning filament. For a slow plate…
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…
Entangled networks of stiff biopolymers exhibit complex dynamic response, emerging from the topological constraints that neighboring filaments impose upon each other. We propose a class of reference models for entanglement dynamics of stiff…
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…