Issue 38, 2016

Abnormal polymer transport in crowded attractive micropost arrays

Abstract

We investigate polymer diffusion in a quasi-two-dimensional environment decorated with attractive cylindrical posts using Langevin dynamics simulation. We find that the polymer diffusivity has non-monotonic dependence on the post array density. This diffusive behavior strongly depends on the adsorption–desorption transition and the critical adsorption strength εc. For ε < εc, the polymer undergoes normal diffusion and the diffusivity decreases as the post density increases due to the reduction of the void volume. For ε > εc, polymer dynamics is strongly mediated by post adsorption, and we observe a regime where the polymer diffusivity increases as the post density increases. The polymer diffusivity reaches a maximum, which can be attributed to cross-post translation enabled by large polymer conformation fluctuations. We find both cross-post transport and polymer conformation fluctuations strongly depend on the post absorption strength and the chain length.

Graphical abstract: Abnormal polymer transport in crowded attractive micropost arrays

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
28 Jūn. 2016
Accepted
24 Aug. 2016
First published
25 Aug. 2016

Soft Matter, 2016,12, 7969-7976

Abnormal polymer transport in crowded attractive micropost arrays

W. Chien and Y. Chen, Soft Matter, 2016, 12, 7969 DOI: 10.1039/C6SM01488G

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