Related papers: Stiffness induced structures and morphological tra…
We investigate the crystallization of a single, flexible homopolymer chain using transition path sampling (TPS). The chain consists of N identical spherical monomers evolved according to Langevin dynamics. While neighboring monomers are…
Protein aggregation in cell membrane is vital for the majority of biological functions. Recent experimental results suggest that transmembrane domains of proteins such as $\alpha$-helices and $\beta$-sheets have different structural…
We investigate the role of fluctuations in single molecule measurements of torque-link ($t-lk$) curves. For semiflexible polymers of finite persistence length (i.e. polymers with contour length $L$ comparable to the persistence length…
The wormlike chain model of stiff polymers is a nonlinear $\sigma$-model in one spacetime dimension in which the ends are fluctuating freely. This causes important differences with respect to the presently available theory which exists only…
Within the frame of an effective, coarse-grained hydrophobic-polar protein model, we employ multicanonical Monte Carlo simulations to investigate free-energy landscapes and folding channels of exemplified heteropolymer sequences, which are…
The properties of a semiflexible polymer with fixed ends exposed to oscillatory shear flow are investigated by simulations. The two-dimensionally confined polymer is modeled as a linear bead-spring chain, and the interaction with the fluid…
The conflict between stiffness and toughness is a fundamental problem in engineering materials design. However, the systematic discovery of microstructured composites with optimal stiffness-toughness trade-offs has never been demonstrated,…
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…
Twist stiffness and an asymmetric bending stiffness of a polymer or a polymer bundle is captured by the elastic ribbon model. We investigate the effects a ring geometry induces to a thermally fluctuating ribbon, finding bend-bend coupling…
We examine the phase transition of polymer adsorption as well as the underlying kinetics of polymer binding from dilute solutions on a structureless solid surface. The emphasis is put on the properties of regular multiblock copolymers,…
We study the elasticity of fibrous materials composed of generalized stiff polymers. It is shown that in contrast to cellular foam-like structures affine strain fields are generically unstable. Instead, a subtle interplay between the…
Soft spheres interacting via a hard core and range of attractive and repulsive "soft-shoulder" potentials self-assemble into clusters forming a variety of mesophases. We combine a mean field theory developed from a lattice model with a…
Polymeric single-chain nanoparticles (SCNPs) are soft nano-objects synthesized by purely intramolecular cross-linking of single polymer chains. By means of computer simulations, we investigate the conformational properties of SCNPs as a…
We investigate the folding transition of a single diblock copolymer consisting of a semiflexible and a flexible block. We obtain a {\it Saturn-shaped} core-shell conformation in the folded state, in which the flexible block forms a core and…
Chirality frustrates and shapes the assembly of flexible filaments in rope-like, twisted bundles and fibers by introducing gradients of both filament shape (i.e. curvature) and packing throughout the structure. Previous models of chiral…
We have mapped the physics of a system of semi-flexible inextensible polymers onto a complex Ginzburg-Landau field theory using techniques of functional integration. It is shown in the limit of low number density of monomers in a melt of…
We investigate theoretically the effect of polymer tension on the collective behavior of reversibly binding cross-links. For this purpose, we employ a model of two weakly bending wormlike chains aligned in parallel by a tensile force, with…
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 long knotted collapsed polymer is determined by a free-energy with a knot-dependent subleading term, which is linked to the length of the shortest polymer that can hold such knot. The only other parameter…
We study knotted polymers in equilibrium with an array of obstacles which models confinement in a gel or immersion in a melt. We find a crossover in both the geometrical and the topological behavior of the polymer. When the polymers' radius…