Dear Colleagues,

The transport of polymers through membranes is a complicated case of study, physically, chemically, and mathematically speaking. When membrane pores have nanometric dimensions, this process becomes difficult to manage, both phenomenologically and as a philosophy of the applied computational model. We now ask whether the passage of polymers through nanopores occurs naturally or is stimulated, with the forces acting on them being considered, allowing the advancement of polymers.

Of particular interest is polyelectrolytes’ translocation dynamics owing to the important practices related to DNA sequencing.

It is also important to further specify whether this process takes place according to the classical equations of motion or whether it should be treated as a stochastic process or, moreover, assimilated with one type of nonlinear dynamics, according to the notions of deterministic chaos or fractal analysis.

We invite research focusing on the problems of synthesis, modification, characterization, and modeling of nanometer-size solid-state channels and pores as membrane constituents of either inert or biological nature. 

Another interesting topic is the strong coupling of the structure and transport in biological channels and polyelectrolyte-modified synthetic nanopores. In short, the structure dictates transport and transport affects structure.

Prof. Dr. Viorel-Puiu Paun
Prof. Dr. Carlo Cattani
Guest Editors

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.

• Nanopores
• polymer transport
• biological membrane
• nanometer-size modeling
• nanoconfinement
• nanodiffusion
• translocation time