2010/03/31 by Katja Ostermeir, Karen Alim, Erwin Frey · 1 citation
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Force Microscopy Techniques and Applications #Ion-surface interactions and analysis #Nanopore and Nanochannel Transport Studies #cond-mat.soft #q-bio.BM
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreve.81.061802
published as Phys. Rev. E 81, 061802 (2010) · 9 pages, 5 figures, version as published
openalex publication_date 2010/06/23 · arxiv created 2010/06/24 · arxiv updated 2010/06/25 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Confinement is a versatile and well-established tool to study the properties of polymers either to understand biological processes or to develop new nanobiomaterials. We investigate the conformations of a semiflexible polymer ring in weak spherical confinement imposed by an impenetrable shell. We develop an analytic argument for the dominating polymer trajectory depending on polymer flexibility considering elastic and entropic contributions. Monte Carlo simulations are performed to assess polymer ring conformations in probability densities and by the shape measures asphericity and nature of asphericity. Comparison of the analytic argument with the mean asphericity and the mean nature of asphericity confirm our reasoning to explain polymer ring conformations in the stiff regime, where elastic response prevails.