Related papers: Variational theory for a single polyelectrolyte ch…
Single-chain elasticity of polyethylene at $\theta$ point up to 90% of stretching with respect to its contour length is computed by Monte-Carlo simulation of an atomistic model in continuous space. The elasticity law together with the…
Using molecular dynamics simulations we study the behavior of a dilute solution of strongly charged polyelectrolytes in poor solvents, where we take counterions explicitly into account. We focus on the chain conformational properties under…
We explore the electrostatic bending response of a chain of charged particles confined on a finite helical filament. We analyze how the energy difference $\Delta E$ between the bent and the unbent helical chain scales with the length of the…
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…
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…
Concentrated forces acting at the tip of a two-dimensional wedge give rise to the classical Flamant solution to linear elasticity, whose displacement and strain are singular at the tip of the wedge. Starting from nonlinear elasticity, we…
We study the elastic properties of a single A/B copolymer chain with a specific sequence. We predict a rich structure in the force extension relations which can be addressed to the sequence. The variational method is introduced to probe…
Modeling ion correlations in inhomogeneous polymers and soft matters with spatially varying ionic strength or dielectric permittivity remains a great challenge. Here, we develop a new theory which systematically incorporates electrostatic…
Brownian motion and viscoelasticity of semiflexible polymers is a subject that has been studied for many years. Still, rigorous analysis has been hindered due to the difficulty in handling the constraint that polymer chains cannot be…
The dynamics of elongated inertial particles in an extensional flow is studied numerically by performing simulations of freely jointed bead-rod chains. The coil-stretch transition and the tumbling instability are characterized as a function…
We investigate the collapse and expansion dynamics of a linear polyelectrolyte (PE) with hydrodynamic interactions. Using dissipative particle dynamics with a bead-spring PE model, long-range electrostatics and explicit ions we examine how…
We theoretically study the polarizability and the interactions of neutral complexes consisting of a semi-flexible polyelectrolyte adsorbed onto an oppositely charged spherical colloid. In the systems we studied, the bending energy of the…
This paper discusses the elastic behavior of a very long crosslinked polyelectrolyte chain (Debye-H\"uckel chain), which is weakly charged. Therefore the response of the crosslinked chain (network) on an external constant force $f$ acting…
The electrostatic screening length predicted by Debye-H\"uckel theory decreases with increasing ionic strength, but recent experiments have found that the screening length can instead increase in concentrated electrolytes. This phenomenon,…
We investigate the properties of a system of semi-diluted polymers in the presence of charged groups and counter-ions, by means of self-consistent field theory. We study a system of polyelectrolyte chains grafted to a similarly, as well as…
We present a theory for the equilibrium structure of polyelectrolyte solutions. The main element is a simple, new optimization scheme that allows theories such as the random phase approximation (RPA) to handle the harsh repulsive forces…
Insight in the crumpling or compaction of one-dimensional objects is of great importance for understanding biopolymer packaging and designing innovative technological devices. By compacting various types of wires in rigid confinements and…
The electrophoretic behaviour of flexible polyelectrolyte chains ranging from single monomers up to long fragments of hundred repeat units is studied by a mesoscopic simulation approach. Abstracting from the atomistic details of the…
The behavior of polyelectrolytes and polyampholytes in semi-dilute solutions is investigated theoretically. Various statistical charge distributions along the polyelectrolyte chains are considered: smeared, annealed, permuted and quenched.…
When the local intrinsic stiffness of a polymer chain varies over a wide range, one can observe both a crossover from rigid-rod-like behavior to (almost) Gaussian random coils and a further crossover towards self-avoiding walks in good…