相关论文: Viscoelastic properties of ring-linear DNA blends …
Mixtures of polymers of varying topologies and stiffnesses display complex emergent rheological properties that often cannot be predicted from their single-component counterparts. For example, entangled blends of ring and linear polymers…
Blends of polymers of different topologies, such as ring and supercoiled, naturally occur in biology and often exhibit emergent viscoelastic properties coveted in industry. However, due to their complexity, along with the difficulty of…
Polymer architecture plays critical roles in both bulk rheological properties and microscale macromolecular dynamics in entangled polymer solutions and composites. Ring polymers, in particular, have been the topic of much debate due to the…
Ring polymers exhibit unique flow properties due to their closed chain topology. Despite recent progress, we have not yet achieved a full understanding of the nonequilibrium flow behavior of rings in nondilute solutions where intermolecular…
Polymer composites are ubiquitous in biology and industry alike, owing to their emergent desirable mechanical properties not attainable in single-species systems. At the same time, polymer topology has been shown to play a key role in…
Composites of flexible and rigid polymers are ubiquitous in biology and industry alike, yet the physical principles determining their mechanical properties are far from understood. Here, we couple force spectroscopy with large-scale…
Ring polymers remain a major challenge to our current understanding of polymer dynamics. Experimental results are difficult to interpret because of the uncertainty in the purity and dispersity of the sample. Using both equilibrium and…
We present a theoretical framework for the linear and nonlinear visco-elastic properties of reversibly crosslinked networks of semiflexible polymers. In contrast to affine models where network strain couples to the polymer end-to-end…
We develop topological methods for characterizing the relationship between polymer chain entanglement and bulk viscoelastic responses. We introduce generalized Linking Number and Writhe characteristics that are applicable to open linear…
We investigate with numerical simulations the molecular origin of viscosity in melts of flexible and semiflexible oligomer rings in comparison to corresponding systems with linear chains. The strong increase of viscosity with ring stiffness…
Polymer composites are ideal candidates for next generation biomimetic soft materials because of their exquisite bottom-up designability. However, the richness of behaviours comes at a price: the need for precise and extensive…
The effects of entanglement in solutions and melts of unknotted ring polymers have been addressed by several theoretical and numerical studies. The system properties have been typically profiled as a function of ring contour length at fixed…
Extensive molecular simulations are applied to characterize the equilibrium dynamics, entanglement topology, and nonlinear extensional rheology of symmetric ring-linear polymer blends with systematically varied ring fraction $\phi_R$.…
A lattice model is used to estimate the self-diffusivity of entangled cyclic and linear polymers in blends of varying compositions. To interpret simulation results, we suggest a minimal model based on the physical idea that constraints…
Entangled networks of stiff biopolymers exhibit complex dynamic response, emerging from the topological constraints that neighboring filaments impose upon each other. We propose a class of reference models for entanglement dynamics of stiff…
In this paper, we employ Molecular Dynamics computer simulations to study and compare the statics and dynamics of linear and circular (ring) polymer chains in entangled solutions of different densities. While we confirm that linear chain…
The response of a short DNA segment to bending is studied, taking into account the anisotropy in the bending rigidities caused by the double-helical structure. It is shown that the anisotropy introduces an effective nonlinear twist-bend…
We briefly review the recent advances in the rheology of entangled polymers and identify emerging research trends and outstanding challenges, especially with respect to branched polymers. Emphasis is placed on the role of well-characterized…
Three-dimensional DNA networks, composed of tri- or higher valent nanostars with sticky, single-stranded DNA overhangs, have been previously studied in the context of designing thermally responsive, viscoelastic hydrogels. In this work, we…
Bulk rheological properties of viscoelastic fluids have been extensively studied in macroscopic shearing geometries. However, little is known when an active microscopic probe is used to locally perturb them far from the linear-response…