Related papers: The Mesostructure of Polymer Collapse and Fractal …
The rapid collapse of a polymer, due to external forces or changes in solvent, yields a long-lived `crumpled globule.' The conjectured fractal structure shaped by hierarchical collapse dynamics has proved difficult to establish, even with…
Collapse of the polymer chain upon the sharp decrease of solvent quality is studied. During collapse, any pair of polymer units appearing in a sufficiently close vicinity in space has the possibility with a certain probability to form an…
The nature of the globule-coil transition of surface-confined polymers has been an issue of debate. Here this 2D collapse transition is studied through a partially directed lattice model. In the general case of polymers with positive…
Macromolecular crowding can influence polymer shapes, which is important for understanding the thermodynamic stability of polymer solutions and the structure and function of biopolymers (proteins, RNA, DNA) under confinement. We explore the…
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…
We present a scaling theory describing the collapse of a homopolymer chain in poor solvent. At time t after the beginning of the collapse, the original Gaussian chain of length N is streamlined to form N/g segments of length R(t), each…
It has been revealed by mean-field theories and computer simulations that the nature of the collapse transition of a polymer is influenced by its bending stiffness $\epsilon_{\rm b}$. In two dimensions, a recent analytical work demonstrated…
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…
Extensive Monte Carlo data analysis gives clear evidence that collapsed linear polymers in two dimensions fall in the universality class of athermal, dense self-avoiding walks, as conjectured by B.Duplantier [Phys.Rev.Lett. 71, 4274…
We investigate a lattice model of polymers where the nearest-neighbour monomer-monomer interaction strengths differ according to whether the local configurations have so-called ``hydrogen-like'' formations or not. If the interaction…
We propose the quantitative mean-field theory of mechanical unfolding of a globule formed by long flexible homopolymer chain collapsed in poor solvent and subjected to extensional deformation. We demonstrate that depending on the degree of…
We investigate, using numerical simulations and analytical arguments, a simple one dimensional model for the swelling or the collapse of a closed polymer chain of size N, representing the dynamical evolution of a polymer in a \Theta-solvent…
We present Monte Carlo simulations of colloidal particles pulled into grafted polymer layers by external fields. The insertion free energy of a single colloid into the polymer layer is qualitatively different for surfaces with an ordered…
The structural evolution of a nano-powder by repeated dispersion and settling can lead to characteristic fractal substructures. This is shown by numerical simulations of a two-dimensional model agglomerate of adhesive rigid particles. The…
We consider the simplest representative of the class of multiply branched polymer macromolecules, known as a pom-pom structure. The molecule consists of a backbone linear chain terminated by two branching points with functionalities…
We study the model of a partially directed flexible or semi-flexible homopolymer on a square lattice, subject to an externally applied force, in a direction either parallel to, or perpendicular to the preferred direction. The polymer is…
We study structural properties of a ring polymeric melt confined in a film in comparison to a linear counterpart using molecular dynamics simulations. Local structure orderings of ring and linear polymers in the vicinity of the surface are…
The "melting" of self-formed rigid structures made of a small number of interacting classical particles confined in an irregular two-dimensional space is investigated using Monte Carlo simulations. It is shown that the interplay of…
We propose the quantitative mean-field theory of mechanical unfolding of a globule formed by long flexible homopolymer chain collapsed in poor solvent and subjected to an extensional force We show that with an increase in the applied force…
This paper reviews recent Monte Carlo simulation studies of the glassy behavior in thin polymer films. The simulations employ a version of the bond-fluctuation lattice model, in which the glass transition is driven by the competition…