Related papers: Polymers in Curved Boxes
Confinement is a versatile and well-established tool to study the properties of polymers either to understand biological processes or to develop new nano-biomaterials. We investigate the conformations of a semiflexible polymer ring in weak…
The bending energy of any freely deformable closed surface is quadratic in its curvature. In the absence of constraints, it will be minimized when the surface adopts the form of a round sphere. If the surface is confined within a…
We study the self-organization of spherical particles in an oscillating flow through experiments inside an oscillating box. The interactions between the particles and the time-averaged (steady streaming) flow lead to the formation of either…
We study a single lattice polymer chain under a fixed end-to-end distance, incorporating both Domb--Joyce (DJ) soft-core self-repulsion between polymer segments and a local bending-energy cost. By decomposing the stiffness into energetic…
We consider a dilute solution of infinitely rigid rods near a curved, perfectly repulsive surface and study the contribution of the rod depletion layer to the bending elastic constants of membranes. We find that a spontaneous curvature…
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…
Quantum vacuum energy has been known to have observable consequences since 1948 when Casimir calculated the force of attraction between parallel uncharged plates, a phenomenon confirmed experimentally with ever increasing precision. Casimir…
Shape transformations in driven and damped molecular chains are considered. Closed chains of weakly coupled molecular subunits under the action of spatially homogeneous time-periodic external field are studied. The coupling between the…
Following our previous work on periodic ray paths (He et al, 2022), we study asymptotically and numerically the structure of internal shear layers for very small Ekman numbers in a three-dimensional (3D) spherical shell and in a…
We study the effect of physical confinement on the capillary infiltration of polymers into cylindrical nanopores using molecular dynamics simulations. In particular, we probe whether the critical contact angle above which capillary rise…
The radius of gyration of a polymer chain immersed in a low molecular weight solvent is known to vary monotonically with the solvent quality. Here, we consider the behavior of a chain immersed in a high molecular weight solvent (polymer…
The conformations of interacting linear polymers on a dynamical planar random lattice are studied using a random two-matrix model. An exact expression for the partition function of self-avoiding chains subject to attractive contact…
Using molecular dynamics simulations we examine the dynamics of a family of model polymers with varying chain length and torsional potential barriers. We focus on features of the dynamics of polymers that are seen experimentally but absent…
The impact of impenetrable obstacles on the energetics and equilibrium structure of strongly repulsive directed polymers is investigated. As a result of the strong interactions, regions of severe polymer depletion and excess are found in…
The statistical mechanics of polymer loops entangled in the two-dimensional array of randomly distributed obstacles of infinite length is discussed. The area of the loop projected to the plane perpendicular to the obstacles is used as a…
A {\it new} formula for the force vs extension relation is derived from the discrete version of the so called {\it worm like chain} model. This formula correctly fits some recent experimental data on polymer stretching and some numerical…
Self-organized three-dimensional (3D) ion Coulomb crystals in linear Paul traps naturally form concentric shells that provide a curved, atomically resolved interface for studying two-dimensional (2D) nanofriction. Building on earlier…
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…
In this paper we consider in detail the connection between the problem of a polymer in a random medium and that of a quantum particle in a random potential. We are interested in a system of finite volume where the polymer is known to be…
We investigate the chain conformation of ring polymers confined to a cylindrical nanochannel using both theoretical analysis and three dimensional Langevin dynamics simulations. We predict that the longitudinal size of a ring polymer scales…