Related papers: Capillary-driven thinning of DNA solutions
Limited-valency colloidal particles can self-assemble into polymeric structures analogous to molecules. While their structural equilibrium properties have attracted wide attention, insight into their dynamics has proven challenging. Here,…
We present a theoretical description of the dynamics of a semi-flexible polymer being pulled through a nanopore by an external force acting at the pore. Our theory is based on the tensile blob picture of Pincus in which the front of the…
Lasers based on biological materials are attracting an increasing interest in view of their use in integrated and transient photonics. DNA as optical biopolymer in combination with highly-emissive dyes has been reported to have excellent…
The surface of a thin liquid film with nonconstant curvature is unstable, as the Laplace pressure drives a flow mediated by viscosity. We present the results of experiments on one of the simplest variable curvature surfaces: a stepped…
In hydrodynamic descriptions of lipid bilayers, the membrane is often approximated as being impermeable to the surrounding, solute-containing fluid. However, biological and in vitro lipid membranes are influenced by their permeability and…
A lattice model is used to estimate the self-diffusivity of entangled cyclic and linear polymers in blends of varying compositions. To interpret simulation results, we suggest a minimal model based on the physical idea that constraints…
We develop a quantitative framework to determine the minimal periodic supercell required for representative simulations of capillarity-screened Darcy flow in stationary random, polydisperse granular media. The microstructure is…
The question of how stiff polymers are able to pack into small containers is particularly relevant to the study of DNA packaging in viruses. A reduced version of the problem based on coarse-grained representations of the main components of…
Reptation theory has been highly successful in explaining the unusual material properties of entangled polymer solutions. It reduces the complex many-body dynamics to a single-polymer description where each polymer is envisaged to be…
The mechanical properties of molecules are today captured by single molecule manipulation experiments, so that polymer features are tested at a nanometric scale. Yet devising mathematical models to get further insight beyond the commonly…
In living systems, DNA undergoes continuous and rhythmic mechanical remodeling through condensation, looping, and disentangling to regulate gene expression, segregate chromosomes, and guide morphogenesis. Here, we demonstrate a purely…
A droplet placed on a hydrophilic conical fiber tends to move toward the end of larger radii due to capillary action. Experimental investigations are performed to explore the dynamics of droplets with varying viscosities and volumes on…
Hypothesis Control of capillary flow through porous media has broad practical implications. However, achieving accurate and reliable control of such processes by tuning the pore size or by modification of interface wettability remains…
If a semiflexible polymer confined to a narrow channel bends around by 180 degrees, the polymer is said to exhibit a hairpin. The equilibrium extension statistics of the confined polymer are well understood when hairpins are vanishingly…
We revisit the problem of semi-flexible chain condensation by neutral depleting agents (e.g. colloidal spheres or flexible polymers) by using a simple formalism that allows us to address its main features without specifying the kind of…
A homogeneous thin polymer film with a stepped height profile levels due to the presence of Laplace pressure gradients. Here we report on studies of polymeric samples with precisely controlled, spatially inhomogeneous molecular weight…
The tumbling dynamics of individual polymers in semidilute solution is studied by large-scale non-equilibrium mesoscale hydrodynamic simulations. We find that the tumbling time is equal to the non-equilibrium relaxation time of the polymer…
We demonstrate that Multi-Body Dissipative Particle Dynamics (MDPD) can be used as an efficient computational tool for the investigation of nanoscale capillary impregnation of confined geometries. As an essential prerequisite, a novel model…
The growing importance of microfluidic and nanofluidic devices to the study of biological processes has highlighted the need to better understand how confinement affects the behavior of polymers in flow. In this paper we explore one aspect…
The dynamics of individual DNA molecules in semidilute solutions undergoing planar extensional flow is simulated using a multi-particle Brownian dynamics algorithm, which incorporates hydrodynamic and excluded volume interactions in the…