Related papers: A Model Ground State of Polyampholytes
Monte Carlo simulations are used to study the non-uniform equilibrium charge distribution along a single annealed polyelectrolyte chain under theta-solvent conditions and with added salt. Within a range of the order of the Debye length…
We present computer simulations to examine probability distributions of gyration radius for the no-thickness closed polymers of N straight segments of equal length. We are particularly interested in the conditional distributions when the…
We present the results of a quantitative study of the phase behavior of a model polymer chain with side spheres using two independent computer simulation techniques. We find that the mere addition of side spheres results in key…
The behavior of a neutral polyampholyte ($PA$) chain with $N$ monomers, in an ionic solution, is analyzed in the framework of the full Debye-H$\ddot u $ckel-Bjerrum-Flory $(DHBjF)$ theory. A $PA$ chain, that in addition to the neutral…
We discuss structural correlations in mixtures of free polymer and colloidal particles based on a microscopic, 2-component liquid state integral equation theory. Whereas in the case of polymers much smaller than the spherical particles the…
We study experimentally what is arguably the simplest yet non-trivial colloidal system: two-dimensional clusters of 6 spherical particles bound by depletion interactions. These clusters have multiple, degenerate ground states whose…
We consider polymers in which M randomly selected pairs of monomers are restricted to be in contact. Analytical arguments and numerical simulations show that an ideal (Gaussian) chain of N monomers remains expanded as long as M<<N; its mean…
The nature of electrostatic interactions involving polyanions modulate the properties of both synthetic and biological macromolecules. Although intensely studied for decades the interplay of many length scales has prevented a complete…
We study knotted polymers in equilibrium with an array of obstacles which models confinement in a gel or immersion in a melt. We find a crossover in both the geometrical and the topological behavior of the polymer. When the polymers' radius…
The elasticity of disordered and polydisperse polymer networks is a fundamental problem of soft matter physics that is still open. Here, we self-assemble polymer networks via simulations of a mixture of bivalent and tri- or tetravalent…
Unconcatenated, unknotted polymer rings in the melt are subject to strong interactions with neighboring chains due to the presence of topological constraints. We study this by computer simulation using the bond-fluctuation algorithm for…
We argue that the mean crossing number of a random polymer configuration is simply a measure of opacity, without being closely related to entanglement as claimed by several authors. We present an easy way of estimating its asymptotic…
We report Monte Carlo simulations of the self-assembly of supramolecular polymers based on a model of patchy particles. We find a first-order phase transition, characterized by hysteresis and nucleation, toward a solid bundle of polymers,…
The behavior of highly charged short rod-like polyelectrolytes near oppositely charged planar surfaces is investigated by means of Monte Carlo simulations. A detailed microstructural study, including monomer and fluid charge distribution,…
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…
The ground state and its structure for a rotating, harmonically trapped N-Boson system with a weak repulsive contact interaction are studied as the angular momentum L increases up to 3N. We show that the ground state is generally a…
A comparative simulation study of polymer brushes formed by grafting at a planar surface either flexible linear polymers (chain length $N_L$) or (non-catenated) ring polymers (chain length $N_R=2 N_L$) is presented. Two distinct off-lattice…
Polysaccharides are semi-flexible polymers composed of sugar residues with a myriad of important functions including structural support, energy storage and immunogenicity. The local conformation of such chains is a crucial factor governing…
Recent advances in Generalized Ensemble simulations and microcanonical analysis allowed the investigation of structural transitions in polymer models over a broad range of local bending and torsion strengths. It is reasonable to argue that…
We investigate, using numerical simulations, the conformations of isolated active ring polymers. We find that the their behaviour depends crucially on their size: short rings ($N \lesssim$ 100) are swelled whereas longer rings ($N \gtrsim$…