Related papers: Polymer Topology and the Depletion Interaction
The effects of entanglement in solutions and melts of unknotted ring polymers have been addressed by several theoretical and numerical studies. The system properties have been typically profiled as a function of ring contour length at fixed…
The interplay of topological constraints, excluded volume interactions, persistence length and dynamical entanglement length in solutions and melts of linear chains and ring polymers is investigated by means of kinetic Monte Carlo…
We apply monomer-resolved computer simulations of supercoiled ring polymers under shear, taking full account of the hydrodynamic interactions, accompanied, in parallel, by simulations in which these are switched off. The combination of…
The statistical mechanics of a linear non-interacting polymer chain with a large number of monomers is considered with fixed angular momentum. The radius of gyration for a linear polymer is derived exactly by functional integration. This…
We use thermodynamic perturbation theory to calculate the free energies and resulting phase diagrams of binary systems of spherical colloidal particles and interacting polymer coils in good solvent within an effective one-component…
We consider a model mixture of hard colloidal spheres and non-adsorbing polymer chains in a theta solvent. The polymer component is modelled as a polydisperse mixture of effective spheres, mutually noninteracting but excluded from the…
When non-adsorbing polymers are added to an isotropic suspension of rod-like colloids, the colloids effectively attract each other via depletion forces. We performed Monte Carlo simulations to study the phase diagram of such rod-polymer…
The number of configurations of a polymer is reduced in the presence of a barrier or an obstacle. The resulting loss of entropy adds a repulsive component to other forces generated by interaction potentials. When the obstructions are scale…
The surface tension, the adsorption, and the depletion thickness of polymers close to a single nonadsorbing colloidal sphere are computed by means of Monte Carlo simulations. We consider polymers under good-solvent conditions and in the…
We consider polymers attached to the tip of a cone, and the resulting force due to entropy loss on approaching a plate (or another cone). At separations shorter than the polymer radius of gyration R_g, the only relevant length scale is the…
Topological constraints can affect both equilibrium and dynamic properties of polymer systems, and can play a role in the organization of chromosomes. Despite many theoretical studies, the effects of topological constraints on the…
We discuss structural correlations in mixtures of free polymer and colloidal particles based on a microscopic, 2-component liquid state integral equation theory. Whereas in the case of polymers much smaller than the spherical particles the…
A polymer repelled by unfavorable interactions with a uniform flat surface may still be pinned to attractive edges and corners. This is demonstrated by considering adsorption of a two-dimensional ideal polymer to an attractive corner of a…
By using the blob theory and computer simulations, we investigate the properties of a linear polymer performing a stationary rotational motion around a long impenetrable rod. In particular, in the simulations the rotation is induced by a…
The equilibrium statistical mechanics of classical directed polymers in 2 dimensions is well known to be equivalent to the imaginary-time quantum dynamics of a 1+1-dimensional many-particle system, with polymer configurations corresponding…
Elucidating the physics of a concentrated suspension of ring polymers, or of an ensemble of ring polymers in a complex environment, is an important outstanding question in polymer physics. Many of the characteristic features of these…
Interfacial properties of colloid--polymer mixtures are examined within an effective one--component representation, where the polymer degrees of freedom are traced out, leaving a fluid of colloidal particles interacting via polymer--induced…
We have generalized the Edwards' method of collective description of dense polymer systems in terms of effective potentials to polymer blends in the presence of a surface. With this method we have studied conformationally asymmetric…
Ring polymers remain a major challenge to our current understanding of polymer dynamics. Experimental results are difficult to interpret because of the uncertainty in the purity and dispersity of the sample. Using both equilibrium and…
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…