Related papers: Entropically Driven Helix Formation
Biomembranes and vesicles consisting of multiple phases can attain a multitude of shapes, undergoing complex shape transitions. We study a Cahn--Hilliard model on an evolving hypersurface coupled to Navier--Stokes equations on the surface…
We present a theoretical description of a mechanism for self assembly in binary soft nanoparticle systems of the type which were studied experimentally by Talapin et al [1]. We focus on, in particular, the conditions for formation of…
We carry out numerical simulations of vesicle formation based on the density functional theory for block copolymer solutions. It is shown by solving the time evolution equations for concentrations that a polymer vesicle is spontaneously…
The presence of ordered structures such as helices in collapsed states of polymer chains is still an open question challenging physics and biology. In this work, we present a potential model for polymer chains with monomers that are not…
Under high cylindrical confinement, segments of ring polymers can be localized along the long axis of the cylinder by introducing internal loops within the ring polymer. The emergent organization of the polymer segments occurs because of…
The tube model is a central concept in polymer physics, and allows to reduce the complex many-filament problem of an entangled polymer solution to a single filament description. We investigate the probability distribution function of…
Molecular dynamics simulations have been employed to study the formation of a physical (thermoreversible) gel by amphiphilic A-B-A triblock copolymers in aqueous solution. In order to mimic the structure of hydrogel-forming polypeptides…
Inspired by recent experiments and simulations on pattern formation in biomolecules by optical tweezers, a theoretical description based on reference interaction site model (RISM) integral equation method is developed to calculate the…
We observe the formation of heaps of repulsive microspheres, created by flowing a colloidal microsphere suspension towards a flat-topped ridge placed within a quasi two-dimensional microfluidic channel. This configuration allows for both…
The effective macroscopic response of nonlinear elastomeric inhomogeneous materials is of great interest in many applications including nonlinear composite materials and soft biological tissues. The interest of the present work is…
Predicting the macroscopic chiral behaviour of cholesteric liquid crystals from the microscopic chirality of the particles is highly non-trivial, even when the chiral interactions are purely entropic in nature. Here we introduce a novel…
We consider sedimentation of a rigid helical filament in a viscous fluid under gravity. In the Stokes limit, the drag forces and torques on the filament are approximated within the resistive-force theory. We develop an analytic…
A hybrid helical structure of equal-sized hard spheres in cylindrical confinement was discovered as a 'by-product' of the recently developed sequential deposition approach [Physical Review E 84, 050302(R) (2011)] for constructing the…
If many micelles adsorb onto the same polymer molecule then they are said to form a necklace. A minimal model of such a necklace is proposed and shown to be almost equivalent to a 1-dimensional fluid with nearest-neighbour interactions. The…
Inspired by recent experiments on the spatial organization of bacterial chromosomes, we consider a type of "bottle brush" polymer consisting of a flexible backbone chain, to which flexible side loops are connected. We show that such a model…
Recent experiments have exploited elastic instabilities in membranes to create complex patterns. However, the rational design of such structures poses many challenges, as they are products of nonlinear elastic behavior. We pose a simple…
Observations of the energetic neutral atoms (ENAs) of heliospheric origin by IBEX differ from expectations based on heliospheric models. It was proposed that the structure of the heliosphere may be similar to the "two-stream" model derived…
Under dehydration conditions, amphipathic Late Embryogenesis Abundant (LEA) proteins fold spontaneously from a random conformation into alpha-helical structures and this transition is promoted by the presence of membranes. To gain insight…
We construct a micromechanical version of an early model for topologically constrained polymers -- a 2D chain amongst point-like uncrossable obstacles -- which allows us to explicitly elucidate the role of topological forces beyond…
By means of sophisticated Monte Carlo methods, we investigate the conformational phase diagram of a simple model for flexible polymers with explicit thickness. The thickness constraint, which is introduced geometrically via the global…