Related papers: Anomalous bending of a polyelectrolyte
The effective elasticity of highly charged stiff polyelectrolytes is studied in the presence of counterions, with and without added salt. The rigid polymer conformations may become unstable due to an effective attraction induced by…
A highly deformable rod, modelled as the extensible elastica, is connected to a movable clamp at one end and to a pin sliding along a frictionless curved profile at the other. Bifurcation analysis shows that axial compliance provides a…
The persistence length of a single, strongly charged, stiff polyelectrolyte chain is investigated theoretically. Path integral formulation is used to obtain the effective electrostatic interaction between the monomers. We find significant…
The effective elasticity of highly charged stiff polyelectrolytes is studied in the presence of counterions, with and without added salt. The rigid polymer conformations may become unstable due to an effective attraction induced by…
A lattice of uniformly charged, infinitesimally thin, rods decorated with an ordered array of counterions exhibits anomalous behavior as the spacing between the rods is varied. In particular, the counterion lattice undergoes a sequence of…
Nonlinear elastic responses of short and stiff polyelectrolytes are investigated by dynamic simulations on a single molecule level. When a polyelectrolyte condensate undergoes a mechanical unfolding, two types of force-extension curves,…
The behavior of highly charged short rod-like polyelectrolytes near oppositely charged planar surfaces is investigated by means of Monte Carlo simulations. A detailed microstructural study, including monomer and fluid charge distribution,…
Unscreened electrostatic interactions exert a profound effect on the onset of the buckling instability of a charged rod. When this interaction is unscreened, the threshold value of the compressional force needed to induce buckling is…
We present a systematic statistical mechanical analysis of the conformational properties of a stiff polyelectrolyte chain with intrachain attractions that are due to counterion correlations. We show that the mean-field solution corresponds…
We study the bending rigidity of highly charged stiff polyelectrolytes, for both a single chain and many chains forming a bundle. A theory is developed to account for the interplay between competitive binding of counterions and charge…
Many charged polymers, including nucleic acids, are locally stiff. Their bending rigidity -- quantified by the persistence length --, depends crucially on Coulombic features, such as the ionic strength of the solution which offers a…
We study the effect of electrostatic interactions on the distribution function of the end-to-end distance of a single polyelectrolyte chain in the rodlike limit. The extent to which the radial distribution function of a polyelectrolyte is…
Polyelectrolytes in poor solvents show a necklace structure where collapsed polymer pearls are linked to stretched strings. In the present paper the elasticity of such chains is studied in detail. Different deformation regimes are…
Deformations of heavy elastic cylinders with their axis in the direction of earth's gravity field are investigated. The specimens, made of polyacrylamide hydrogels, are attached from their top circular cross section to a rigid plate. An…
We analyze stability of a thin inextensible elastic rod which has non-vanishing spontaneous generalized torsions in its stress-free state. Two classical problems are studied, both involving spontaneously twisted rods: a rectilinear beam…
The linear instability of a beam tensioned by its own weight is considered. It is shown that for long beams, in the sense of an adequate dimensionless parameter, the characteristics of the instability caused by a follower force do not…
The linear response of two-dimensional amorphous elastic bodies to an external delta force is determined in analogy with recent experiments on granular aggregates. For the generated forces, stress and displacement fields, we find strong…
Two equal and opposite distributed dead loads are applied orthogonally to the axis of an elastic rod in its rectilinear reference configuration, one at the extrados and the other at the intrados, such that the resultant applied force per…
When an inextensible elastic rod is 'injected' through a sliding sleeve against a fixed constraint, configurational forces are developed, deeply influencing the mechanical response. This effect, which is a consequence of the change in…
In this Letter, we consider a neutral system of mobile positive and negative charges confined on the surface of curved films. This may be an appropriate model for: i) a highly charged membrane whose counterions are confined to a sheath near…