Related papers: Stretching short biopolymers by fields and forces
We study the behavior of threads and polymers in a turbulent flow. These objects have finite spatial extension, so the flow along them differs slightly. The corresponding drag forces produce a finite average stretching and the thread is…
We investigated the Karman vortex behind a circular cylinder in a polymer solution by a molecular dynamics simulation. The vortex characteristics are distinctly different for short and long polymers. The solution with the long polymer…
A coarse grained model for flexible polymers end-grafted to repulsive spherical nanoparticles is studied for various chain lengths and grafting densities under good solvent conditions, by Molecular Dynamics methods and density functional…
Topological entanglements in polymers are mimicked by sliding rings (slip-links) which enforce pair contacts between monomers. We study the force-extension curve for linear polymers in which slip-links create additional loops of variable…
A statistical mechanical description of flexible and semi-flexible polymer chains in a poor solvent is developed in the constant force and constant distance ensembles. We predict the existence of many intermediate states at low temperatures…
We use the worm-like chain model to analytically calculate the linear response of a grafted semiflexible polymer to a uniform force field. The result is a function of the bending stiffness, the temperature, the total contour length, and the…
Constitutive modeling of dielectric elastomers has been of long standing interest in mechanics. Over the last two decades rigorous constitutive models have been developed that couple the electrical response of these polymers with large…
We consider a long, semiflexible polymer, with persistence length $P$ and contour length $L$, fluctuating in a narrow cylindrical channel of diameter $D$. In the regime $D\ll P\ll L$ the free energy of confinement $\Delta F$ and the length…
We present a theoretical analysis of a simple model of the depinning of an anchored semiflexible polymer from a fixed planar substrate in (1+1) dimensions. We consider a polymer with a discrete sequence of pinning sites along its contour.…
Theoretical analyses and experiments have been carried out to investigate fracture behavior of glassy polymers. Our birefringence measurements quantify the local stress buildup at cut tip during different stages of drawing. Based on…
We study the conformational properties of polymers in presence of extended columnar defects of parallel orientation. Two classes of macromolecules are considered: the so-called partially directed polymers with preferred orientation along…
The folding transition of single, long semiflexible polymers was studied with special emphasis on the chain length effect using Monte Carlo simulations. While a relatively short chain (10-25 Kuhn segments) undergoes a large discrete…
We study the fluctuations of the directed polymer in 1+1 dimensions in a Gaussian random environment with a finite correlation length {\xi} and at finite temperature. We address the correspondence between the geometrical transverse…
Thermal fluctuations of microtubules (MTs) and other cytoskeletal filaments govern to a great extent the complex rheological properties of the cytoskeleton in eukaryotic cells. In recent years, much effort has been put into capturing the…
We study the statistical mechanics of double-stranded semi-flexible polymers using both analytical techniques and simulation. We find a transition at some finite temperature, from a type of short range order to a fundamentally different…
Brush-like structures emerge from stretching of long polymer chains, densely grafted on to the surface of an impermeable substrate. They arise due to the competition between conformational entropic elasticity of polymer chains and excluded…
We consider polymers attached to the tip of a cone, and the resulting force due to entropy loss on approaching a plate (or another cone). At separations shorter than the polymer radius of gyration R_g, the only relevant length scale is the…
We study the spontaneous out-of-plane bending of a planar untwisted ribbon composed of nematic polymer networks activated by a change in temperature. Our theory accounts for both stretching and bending energies, which compete to establish…
In this paper we present simulations of a surface-adsorbed polymer subject to an elongation force. The polymer is modelled by a self-avoiding walk on a regular lattice. It is confined to a half-space by an adsorbing surface with attractions…
The folding transition of biopolymers from the coil to compact structures has attracted wide research interest in the past and is well studied in polymer physics. Recent seminal works on DNA in confined devices have shown that these long…