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Polymers
Special Issues
Structure Formation and Dynamics of Semiflexible Macromolecules
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Structure Formation and Dynamics of Semiflexible Macromolecules

A special issue of Polymers (ISSN 2073-4360). This special issue belongs to the section "Polymer Physics and Theory".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 May 2020) | Viewed by 5781

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Arash Nikoubashman

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Institute of Physics, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Staudingerweg 7, 55128 Mainz, Germany
Interests: microfluidics of complex liquids; directed assembly of soft matter; semiflexible macromolecules in confinement; soft matter; chemical engineering; simulations

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Semiflexible polymers are ubiquitous as constituents of biological matter and also find widespread use as building blocks of advanced materials. Yet, their static and dynamic behaviors are only partially understood and pose challenging questions in the context of polymer physics. Semiflexible polymers are characterized by several crossover length scales, such as the persistence and contour length, which introduce a large number of disparate time and length scales that are relevant to describing their structure formation and dynamics. In the past decade, progress in experimental and computational techniques has led to a renaissance of this research field, resulting in the verification of previous theories and the discovery of novel physical properties.

This Special Issue of Polymers is intended to cover these new advances on the structure formation and dynamics of semfilexible macromolecules from experiments, simulations, and theory. Various synthetic and natural macromolecules are of interest, which may be linear, cyclic, star-like or of any other topology. The systems can be in melt or in solution, in equilibrium or under nonequilibrium conditions, e.g., under flow, in confinement, or with activity. Preferably, contributions shall focus on the emergence of mesoscopic/macroscopic ordering, e.g., nematic or smectic, originating from the intrinsic stiffness of the macromolecules. Both original contributions and brief reviews are welcome.

Dr. Arash Nikoubashman
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Polymers is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Semiflexible polymers
  • Biopolymers
  • Persistence length
  • Nematic/smectic/cholesteric ordering
  • Self-assembly
  • Topological defects
  • Experiments
  • Simulations
  • Theory

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

20 pages, 1499 KiB  
Article
Performance of Coarse Graining in Estimating Polymer Properties: Comparison with the Atomistic Model
by Ryota Miwatani, Kazuaki Z. Takahashi and Noriyoshi Arai
Polymers 2020, 12(2), 382; https://doi.org/10.3390/polym12020382 - 8 Feb 2020
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 2706
Abstract
Combining atomistic and coarse-grained (CG) models is a promising approach for quantitative prediction of polymer properties. However, the gaps between the length and time scales of atomistic and CG models still need to be bridged. Here, the scale gaps of the atomistic model [...] Read more.
Combining atomistic and coarse-grained (CG) models is a promising approach for quantitative prediction of polymer properties. However, the gaps between the length and time scales of atomistic and CG models still need to be bridged. Here, the scale gaps of the atomistic model of polyethylene melts, the bead–spring Kremer–Grest model, and dissipative particle dynamics with the slip-spring model were investigated. A single set of spatial and temporal scaling factors was determined between the atomistic model and each CG model. The results of the CG models were rescaled using the set of scaling factors and compared with those of the atomistic model. For each polymer property, a threshold value indicating the onset of static or dynamic universality of polymers was obtained. The scaling factors also revealed the computational efficiency of each CG model with respect to the atomistic model. The performance of the CG models of polymers was systematically evaluated in terms of both the accuracy and computational efficiency. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Structure Formation and Dynamics of Semiflexible Macromolecules)
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14 pages, 4063 KiB  
Article
Entropy-Induced Separation of Binary Semiflexible Ring Polymer Mixtures in Spherical Confinement
by Xiaolin Zhou, Fuchen Guo, Ke Li, Linli He and Linxi Zhang
Polymers 2019, 11(12), 1992; https://doi.org/10.3390/polym11121992 - 2 Dec 2019
Cited by 16 | Viewed by 2868
Abstract
Coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations are used to investigate the conformations of binary semiflexible ring polymers (SRPs) of two different lengths confined in a hard sphere. Segregated structures of SRPs in binary mixtures are strongly dependent upon the number density of system (ρ [...] Read more.
Coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations are used to investigate the conformations of binary semiflexible ring polymers (SRPs) of two different lengths confined in a hard sphere. Segregated structures of SRPs in binary mixtures are strongly dependent upon the number density of system (ρ), the bending energy of long SRPs (Kb, long), and the chain length ratio of long to short SRPs (α). With a low ρ or a weak Kb, long at a small ratio α, long SRPs are immersed randomly in the matrix of short SRPs. As ρ and bending energy of long SRPs (Kb, long) are increased up to a certain value for a large ratio α, a nearly complete segregation between long and short SRPs is observed, which can be further characterized by the ratio of tangential and radial components of long SRPs velocity. These explicit segregated structures of the two components in spherical confinement are induced by a delicate competition between the entropic excluded volume (depletion) effects and bending contributions. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Structure Formation and Dynamics of Semiflexible Macromolecules)
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