Related papers: Collapse of Randomly Linked Polymers
During fast diffusion-influenced polymerization, nonequilibrium behavior of the polymer chains and the surrounding reactive monomers has been reported recently. Based on the laws of thermodynamics, the emerging nonequilibrium structures…
The dynamics of polymer-nanoparticle (NP) mixtures, which involves multiple scales and system-specific variables, has posed a long-standing challenge on its theoretical description. In this paper, we construct a microscopic theory for…
Using a theoretical model we show that ideal ring polymers are stronger depletants than ideal linear polymers of equal radii of gyration, but not of equal hydrodynamic radii. The difference in the depletion-induced force profile is largely…
The critical incompatibility of polymers with different compositions scales inversely with their length. For instance, a mixture of A and B homopolymers of length $N$ segregates at $\chi_{AB}^{cr} = 2/N$. But what if the difference between…
A variational approach is considered to calculate the free energy and the conformational properties of a polyelectrolyte chain in $d$ dimensions. We consider in detail the case of pure Coulombic interactions between the monomers, when…
The conformational statistics of ring polymers in melts or dense solutions is strongly affected by their quenched microscopic topological state. The effect is particularly strong for non-concatenated unknotted rings, which are known to…
An extended polymer collapses to form a globule when subjected to a quench below the collapse transition temperature. The process begins with the formation of clusters of monomers or ``pearls''. The nascent clusters merge, resulting in…
The statistical mechanics of polymers grafted on surfaces has been the subject of intense research activity because of many potential applications. In this paper, we analytically investigate the conformational changes caused by a single…
We investigate the crystallization of a single, flexible homopolymer chain using transition path sampling (TPS). The chain consists of N identical spherical monomers evolved according to Langevin dynamics. While neighboring monomers are…
We consider a two-letter self-avoiding (square) lattice heteropolymer model of N_H (out ofN) attracting sites. At zero temperature, permanent links are formed leading to collapse structures for any fraction rho_H=N_H/N. The average chain…
We propose a continuum theory to model the Mullins effect, which is ubiquitously observed in polymer composites. In the theory, the softening of the materials during the stretching process is accounted for by considering the delamination of…
Nanometer-thick supported lms of polymer melts spontaneously form and spread around sessile droplets that are deposited on oxidized silicon wafers. At steady state, the lms become dense and adopt a uniform thickness which is equal to twice…
Analytical treatments of polymer dynamics have mostly been restricted to linear response theory around some steady state obtained via perturbative field theory. Here, I derive an analytical framework that yields unified access to the…
A lattice model of the directed self-avoiding walk is used to estimate the possibility on the formation of an infinitely long linear semi-flexible copolymer chain. The copolymer chain is assumed to composed of four different types of the…
In this thesis the formation and properties of a polymer gel on and at a surface are investigated. The gel under investigation is defined as a three-dimensional network of "phantom" macromolecules that form permanent links with one another…
We present results of molecular dynamics simulations of very long model polymer chains analyzed by various experimentally relevant techniques. The segment motion of the chains is found to be in very good agreement with the repatation model.…
We present computer simulations of three systems of randomly branching polymers in d=3 dimensions: ideal trees and self-avoiding trees with annealed and quenched connectivities. In all cases, we performed a detailed analysis of trees…
It is common to study polymer physics through the use of idealized single-chain models, and the most popular of these is the freely jointed chain model. In certain thermodynamic ensembles, statistical mechanical treatment of this model is…
We perform a Monte Carlo study of $N$-step self-avoiding walks, attached to the corner of an impenetrable wedge in two dimensions ($d=2$), or the tip of an impenetrable cone in $d=3$, of sizes ranging up to $N=10^6$ steps. We find that the…
The size of a zero thickness (no excluded volume) polymer ring is shown to scale with chain length $N$ in the same way as the size of the excluded volume (self-avoiding) linear polymer, as $N^{\nu}$, where $\nu \approx 0.588$. The…