Self-Organized States from Solutions of Active Ring Polymers in Bulk and under Confinement

JP Miranda and E Locatelli and C Valeriani, JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL THEORY AND COMPUTATION, 20, 1636-1645 (2023).

DOI: 10.1021/acs.jctc.3c00818

In the present work, we study, by means of numerical simulations, the structural and dynamical behavior of a suspension of active ring polymers in bulk and under lateral confinement. At high activity, when changing the distance between the confining planes and the polymers' density, we identify the emergence of a self-organized dynamical state, characterized by the coexistence of slowly diffusing clusters of rotating disks and faster rings moving in between them. We further assess that self-organization is robust in a range of polymer sizes, and we identify a critical value of the activity, necessary to trigger cluster formation. This system has distinctive features resembling at the same time polymers, liquid crystals, and active systems, where the interplay between activity, topology, and confinement leads to a spontaneous segregation in an initially one-component solution.

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