Influence of polymer-pore interactions on translocation

TL;DR

This study uses Langevin dynamics simulations to explore how polymer-pore interactions affect translocation probability, time, and distribution, revealing that attraction strength significantly influences translocation dynamics and aligns with experimental observations.

Contribution

It provides new insights into how varying polymer-pore interactions alter translocation behavior, including distribution transitions and non-monotonic effects under different forces.

Findings

Attractive interactions increase translocation probability.

Weak attraction slightly prolongs translocation time; strong attraction causes exponential increase.

Translocation time distribution shifts from Gaussian to long-tailed with increased attraction.

Abstract

We investigate the influence of polymer-pore interactions on the translocation dynamics using Langevin dynamics simulations. An attractive interaction can greatly improve translocation probability. At the same time, it also increases translocation time slowly for weak attraction while exponential dependence is observed for strong attraction. For fixed driving force and chain length the histogram of translocation time has a transition from Gaussian distribution to long-tailed distribution with increasing attraction. Under a weak driving force and a strong attractive force, both the translocation time and the residence time in the pore show a non-monotonic behavior as a function of the chain length. Our simulations results are in good agreement with recent experimental data.