Aggregation of a macromolecule in a nano cube

TL;DR

This paper models a semi-flexible polymer chain confined in a nano cube to analyze its thermodynamic properties, revealing distinct conformational behaviors compared to bulk states using an analytical approach.

Contribution

It introduces a modified recursion relation method to calculate the thermodynamics of a semi-flexible polymer in nano confinement, extending to self-avoiding chains.

Findings

Nano aggregate exhibits unique conformational statistics.

Analytical estimates show differences from bulk thermodynamics.

Method can be extended to self-avoiding polymers.

Abstract

We model a macromolecule as an infinitely long Gaussian semi-flexible polymer chain and the conformations of the chain were realized in the nano cube using a cubic lattice. A modified version of the recursion relations is used to calculate the grand canonical partition function of the chain to investigate distinct thermo-dynamical properties of the nano polymer aggregate than corresponding bulk behaviour of the macromolecule. Our analytical estimates on the thermodynamical properties of the macromolecule clearly show that the nano aggregate of the polymer chain has interesting and distinct conformational statistics than its corresponding bulk state, and the method described in the present report can be easily extend to investigate the thermodynamics of the selfavoiding polymer chain in the nano dimensions.