Theeyancheri Ligesh, Chaki Subhasish, Bhattacharjee Tapomoy, Chakrabarti Rajarshi
Department of Chemistry, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai 400076, India.
Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA.
Phys Rev E. 2022 Jul;106(1-1):014504. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevE.106.014504.
Inspired by how the shape deformations in active organisms help them to migrate through disordered porous environments, we simulate active ring polymers in two-dimensional random porous media. Flexible and inextensible active ring polymers navigate smoothly through the disordered media. In contrast, semiflexible rings undergo transient trapping inside the pore space; the degree of trapping is inversely correlated with the increase in activity. We discover that flexible rings swell while inextensible and semiflexible rings monotonically shrink upon increasing the activity. Together, our findings identify the optimal migration of active ring polymers through porous media.
受活动生物体中的形状变形如何帮助它们在无序多孔环境中迁移的启发，我们在二维随机多孔介质中模拟了活性环状聚合物。柔性且不可伸长的活性环状聚合物能在无序介质中平稳导航。相比之下，半柔性环会在孔隙空间内经历短暂捕获；捕获程度与活性增加呈负相关。我们发现，随着活性增加，柔性环会膨胀，而不可伸长和半柔性环会单调收缩。总之，我们的研究结果确定了活性环状聚合物在多孔介质中的最佳迁移方式。
