Semiflexible Polymer Confined in Closed Spaces

TL;DR

This paper investigates the static properties of strongly confined semiflexible polymers in closed spaces, deriving scaling forms of free energy and discussing effects of geometry and solvent quality.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed analysis of confinement effects on semiflexible polymers, including new scaling forms accounting for chain rigidity and confinement geometry.

Findings

Derived scaling forms of excess free energy for different regimes

Identified the influence of confinement geometry on polymer behavior

Discussed effects of solvent quality on confined polymers

Abstract

We analyze static properties of a strongly confined semiflexible polymer, i.e. either trapped in a closed space or compressed by external forces, in an athermal solvent. Like a flexible polymer case, we can resort to an analogy with the semidilute solution, but a complication due to the additional length scale arising from the chain rigidity results in more diverse behaviours depending on system parameters. For each regime, scaling forms of the excess free energy of the confinement are derived. Effects of the confinement geometry and the solvent quality are briefly discussed.