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This work introduces a methodology for the statistical mechanical analysis of polymeric chains under tension controlled by optical or magnetic tweezers at thermal equilibrium with an embedding fluid medium. The response of single bonds…
Morphological transformations of amphiphilic AB diblock copolymers in mixtures of a common solvent (S1) and a selective solvent (S2) for the B block are studied using the simulated annealing method. We focus on the morphological…
The miscibility of polymer blends, a classical problem in polymer science, may be altered, if one or both of the component do not have chain ends. Based on the idea of {\it topological volume}, we propose a mean-field theory to clarify how…
Conformational transitions are ubiquitous in biomolecular systems, have significant functional roles and are subject to evolutionary pressures. Here we provide a first theoretical framework for topological transition, i.e. conformational…
Theoretical calculations, computer simulations and experiments indicate the possible existence of a ferromagnetic liquid state. Should such a state exist, demagnetization effects would force a nontrivial magnetization texture governed by…
The freely rotating chain is one of the classic discrete models of a polymer in dilute solution. It consists of a broken line of N straight segments of fixed length such that the angle between adjacent segments is constant and the N-1…
We numerically investigate and experimentally demonstrate an in-situ topological band transition in a highly tunable mechanical system made of cylindrical granular particles. This system allows us to tune its inter-particle stiffness in a…
Herein, we describe new methods to produce colloidal particle chains of three stiffness regimes that can be observed on a single-particle level, that is, on the level of the monomers that make up the chain; the chains can even be observed…
The conformations of semiflexible (bio)polymers are studied in flow through geometrically structured microchannels. Using mesoscale hydrodynamics simulations, we show that the polymer undergoes a rod-to-helix transition as it moves from the…
We study the conformational behavior of polarizable polymer chain under an external homogeneous electric field within the Flory type self-consistent field theory. We consider the influence of electric field on the polymer coil as well as on…
It is nontrivial whether the average size of a ring polymer should become smaller or larger under a topological constraint. Making use of some knot invariants, we evaluate numerically the mean square radius of gyration for ring polymers…
We study the magneto-elastic coupling behavior of paramagnetic chains in soft polymer gels exposed to external magnetic fields. To this end, a laser scanning confocal microscope is used to observe the morphology of the paramagnetic chains…
Nuclei of ordered materials emerging from the isotropic state usually show a shape topologically equivalent to a sphere; the well-known examples are crystals and nematic liquid crystal droplets. In this work, we explore experimentally and…
We investigate experimentally and numerically the defect configurations emerging when a cholesteric liquid crystal is confined to a spherical shell. We uncover a rich scenario of defect configurations, some of them non-existent in nematic…
Chain molecules play important roles in industry and in living cells. Our focus here is on distinct ways of modeling the stiffness inherent in a chain molecule. We consider three types of stiffnesses -- one yielding an energy penalty for…
We study the unfolding of a single polymer chain due to an external force. We use a simplified model which allows to perform all calculations in closed form without assuming a Boltzmann-Gibbs form for the equilibrium distribution.…
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…
We calculate statistical properties of amorphous polymer chains between crystalline lamellae by self-consistent field model simulations. In our model, an amorphous subchain is modelled as a polymer chain of which ends are grafted onto the…
The results obtained from molecular dynamics simulations of the friction at an interface between polymer melts and weakly attractive crystalline surfaces are reported. We consider a coarse-grained bead-spring model of linear chains with…
We consider an explicit model of a semiflexible filament moving in two dimensions on a gliding assay of motor proteins, which attach to and detach from filament segments stochastically, with a detachment rate that depends on the local load…