Confinement, curvature, and attractive interaction effects on polymer surface adsorption

W Chien and YL Chen, JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL PHYSICS, 147, 064901 (2017).

DOI: 10.1063/1.4996738

We investigate the conformation and dynamics of a semi-flexible polymer near an attractive plane or a cylindrical post using Langevin dynamics. We characterize the transition from the desorbed to absorbed state and quantify how absorption depends on the attraction interaction, polymer molecular weight, polymer flexibility, intra-polymer interaction, and micro-confinement. We find that the critical point of adsorption for ideal flexible polymers only weakly depends on confinement. However, the critical point of adsorption increases significantly for self-avoiding flexible polymers and under confinement, deviating from scaling theory predictions. These findings provide insights into DNA surface adsorption in nanoslits and nanochannels. Published by AIP Publishing.

Return to Publications page