Related papers: Polymer chains in confined spaces and flow-injecti…
The past few years have seen many advances in our understanding of the dynamics of polymeric fluids. These include improvements on the successful reptation theory; an emerging molecular theory of semiflexible chain dynamics; and an…
The conformational behavior of a polymer in a critical binary solvent confined in a porous medium is studied. The size of the polymer in bulk, which is mainly governed by the correlation length of the solvent density fluctuations, depends…
Using molecular dynamics simulations we study the slow dynamics of a hard sphere fluid confined in a disordered porous matrix. The presence of both discontinuous and continuous glass transitions as well as the complex interplay between…
We study the swelling of a flexible linear chain composed of active particles by analytical theory and computer simulation. Three different situations are considered: a free chain, a chain confined to an external harmonic trap, and a chain…
Living cells are characterized by the micrometric confinement of various macromolecules at high concentrations. Using droplets containing binary polymer blends as artificial cells, we previously showed that cell-sized confinement causes…
Using transfer operator and fundamental measure theories, we examine the structural and thermodynamic properties of hard rectangles confined between two parallel hard walls. The side lengths of the rectangle ($L$ and $D$, $L>D$) and the…
We revisit the classical problem of a polymer confined in a slit in both of its static and dynamic aspects. We confirm a number of well known scaling predictions and analyse their range of validity by means of comprehensive Molecular…
In this paper we investigate the conformation statistics of a Gaussian chain embedded in a medium of finite size, in the presence of quenched random obstacles. The similarities and differences between the case of random obstacles and the…
Experiments using nanofluidic devices have proven effective in characterizing the physical properties of polymers confined to small cavities. Two recent studies using such methods examined the organization and dynamics of two DNA molecules…
We extend classical Flory-Rehner theory for the expansion and compression of porous materials such as cross-linked polymer networks. The theory includes volume exclusion, affinity with the solvent, and finite stretching of the polymer…
A simple model for functionalized disordered porous media is proposed and the effects of confinement on self-association, percolation and phase behavior of a fluid of patchy particles are studied. The media is formed by a randomly…
The breakage of a polymer chain of segments, coupled by anharmonic bonds with applied constant external tensile force is studied by means of Molecular Dynamics simulation. We show that the mean life time of the chain becomes progressively…
The entropic effects of anchored polymers on biomembranes are studied using simulations of a meshless membrane model combined with anchored linear polymer chains. The bending rigidity and spontaneous curvature are investigated for anchored…
Water behaves very differently at surfaces and under extreme confinement, but the boundary between these two regimes has remained unclear. Despite evidence that interfacial effects persist under sub-nanometre confinement, the…
We study the dynamics of an ideal polymer chain in a crowded, viscoelastic medium and in the presence of active forces. The motion of the centre of mass and of individual monomers is calculated. On time scales that are comparable to the…
Spatial confinement in nanoporous media affects the structure, thermodynamics and mobility of molecular soft matter often markedly. This article reviews thermodynamic equilibrium phenomena, such as physisorption, capillary condensation,…
We present results from molecular dynamics simulations of a spherically confined neutral polymer in the presence of crowding agents, studying polymer shapes and conformations as a function of the confining potential, solvent quality and the…
We propose new polymer models for Monte Carlo simulation and apply them to a polymer chain confined in a relatively thin box which has both curved and flat sides, and show that either an ideal or an excluded-volume chain spends more time in…
We write exact equations for the thermodynamic properties of a linear polymer molecule confined to walk on a lattice of finite size. The dimension of the space in which the lattice resides can be arbitrary. We also calculate polymer…
We study the conformational properties of charged polymers in a solvent in the presence of structural obstacles correlated according to a power law $\sim x^{-a}$. We work within the continuous representation of a model of linear chain…