Related papers: Helix formation in linear achiral dendronized poly…
Helices are not generic outcomes of polymer collapse. Collapsed conformations of semiflexible polymers with isotropic attractions typically form globules, toroids, or rod-like structures, as seen in simulations and described by…
Dendronized polymers consist of an elastic backbone with a set of iterated branch structures (dendrimers)attached at every base point of the backbone. The conformations of such molecules depend on the elastic deformation of the backbone and…
Hard helices can be regarded as a paradigmatic elementary model for a number of natural and synthetic soft matter systems, all featuring the helix as their basic structural unit: from natural polynucleotides and polypeptides to synthetic…
Configurations of a single semiflexible polymer is studied when it is pushed into a nanochannel in the case where the polymer persistence length $l_p$ is much longer than the channel diameter $D$, i.e. $l_p/D \gg 1$. Using numerical…
Molecular dynamics simulations are used to study structure formation in simple model polymer chains that are subject to excluded volume and torsional interactions. The changing conformations exhibited by chains of different lengths under…
Generic interactions e.g. the Coulomb or other long ranged radially symmetric repulsive interactions between monomers of bead-spring model of a semi-flexible polymer induce instabilities in a initially straight polymer chain to form long…
Intimately connected to the rule of life, chirality remains a long-time fascination in biology, chemistry, physics and materials science. Chiral structures, e.g., nucleic acid and cholesteric phase developed from chiral molecules are common…
The shape of the building blocks plays a crucial role in directing self-assembly towards desired architectures. Out of the many different shapes, helix has a unique position. Helical structures are ubiquitous in nature and a helical shape…
By means of extensive replica-exchange simulations of generic coarse-grained models for helical polymers, we systematically investigate the structural transitions into all possible helical phases for flexible and semiflexible elastic…
Helical motifs are ubiquitious in macromolecular systems. The mechanism of spontaneous emergence of helicity is unknown, especially in cases where torsional interactions are absent. Emergence of helical order needs coordinated organization…
We present Monte Carlo simulation results for square-well homopolymers at a series of bond lengths. Although the model contains only isotropic pairwise interactions, under appropriate conditions this system shows spontaneous chiral symmetry…
Self-assembled monolayers of polyalanine $\alpha$-helices exhibit distinct structural phases with implications for chiral-induced spin selectivity. We combine scanning tunneling microscopy and theoretical modeling to reveal how chiral…
Recently, it has been demonstrated [Magee et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 96, 207802 (2006)] that isolated, square-well homopolymers can spontaneously break chiral symmetry and freeze into helical structures at sufficiently low temperatures. This…
We systematically explore the self-assembly of semi-flexible polymers in deformable spherical confinement across a wide regime of chain stiffness, contour lengths and packing fractions by means of coarse-grained molecular dynamics…
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…
The helix is a ubiquitous motif for biopolymers. We propose a heuristic, entropically based model that predicts helix formation in a system of hard spheres and semiflexible tubes. We find that the entropy of the spheres is maximized when…
Biological molecules can form hydrogen bonds between nearby residues, leading to helical secondary structures. The associated reduction of configurational entropy leads to a temperature dependence of this effect: the "helix-coil…
Dendritic growth patterns exhibiting four-fold anisotropy are observed when polyethylene oxide undergoes phase segregation from a solution phase to a solid phase. When this phase transition occurs on a substrate that has patterns of…
Using Langevin simulations, we find that simple 'generic' bead-and-spring homopolymer chains in a sufficiently bad solvent spontaneously develop helical order during the process of collapsing from an initially stretched conformation. The…
Molecular process of polymer collapse was reproduced by isothermal molecular dynamics simulation. The initial polymer chains were obtained by mean of random walks in continuum space. Two potential models were considered to represent short…