Structural phases of adsorption for flexible polymers on nanocylinder surfaces

Abstract

By means of generalized-ensemble Monte Carlo simulations, we investigate the thermodynamic behavior of a flexible, elastic polymer model in the presence of an attractive nanocylinder. We systematically identify the structural phases that are formed by competing monomer-monomer and monomer-substrate interactions. The influence of the relative surface attraction strength on the structural phases in the hyperphase diagram, parameterized by cylinder radius and temperature, is discussed as well. In the limiting case of the infinitely large cylinder radius, our results coincide with previous outcomes of studies of polymer adsorption on planar substrates.

Effect of grafting on the binding transition of two flexible polymers

“…Even more interesting is the equivalence between two-polymer binding of directed polymers and adsorption [7]. This should qualitatively remain valid also for flexible polymers [32], especially if one imagines the crossover scenario of a flexible polymer adsorbed to a nanowire, equivalent to the stiff limit of a polymer chain [33,34], or a flexible polymer adsorbing to a flexible surface [35]. In fact, it was shown that grafting alters the firstorder-like adsorption transition to a second-order-like transition [36].…”

Structure and dynamics of an active polymer adsorbed on the surface of a cylinder

“…We use the home-modified LAMMPS software to perform simulations. 30 All beads of the cylinder are immovable in the simulation. The simulation box is 80s  80s  100s with the periodic boundary condition in all directions, which is large enough to avoid the finite size effects.…”

Thermodynamics of the adsorption of flexible polymers on nanowires

“…1. The systematic discussion of polymer adsorption at cylindrical substrates will be done elsewhere [28]. In our model of the polymer-wire system, the polymer is not grafted to the string and can move freely.…”

“…For comparatively large string thickness and sufficiently high adsorption strength, the polymer wraps only partially around the string. This structural phase is very typical for polymer adsorption transitions at cylinders [26,28] and has been called "clamshell" phase (C). Figure 2 shows typical conformations in these different structural low-energy phases for a polymer with 200 monomers at various values of string parameters σ f and ǫ f , supporting our general findings for other chain lengths [43].…”

“…Much less literature exists about polymer adsorption at fluctuating surfaces such as membranes [24,25], because of the substantially increased complexity of the problem. Flexible polymers can also optimally adapt to curved surfaces such as cylindrical substrates [26][27][28], which causes the formation of polymer structures different from the adsorption phases at flat substrates.…”