Anisotropic effective interactions and stack formation in mixtures of semiflexible ring polymers.
By means of extensive computer simulations, we investigate the formation of columnar structures (stacks) in concentrated solutions of semiflexible ring polymers. To characterize the stacks we employ an algorithm that identifies tube-like structures in the simulation cell. Stacks are found both in the real system and in the fluid of soft disks interacting through the effective anisotropic pair potential derived for the rings [P. Poier et al., Macromolecules, 2015, 48, 4983-4997]. Furthermore, we investigate binary mixtures of cluster-forming and non-cluster-forming rings. We find that monodispersity is not a requirement for stack formation. The latter is found for a broad range of mixture compositions, though the columns in the mixtures exhibit important differences to those observed in the monodisperse case. We extend the anisotropic effective model to mixtures. We show that it correctly predicts stack formation and constitutes a significant improvement with respect to the usual isotropic effective description based only on macromolecular centers-of-mass.
Faculty of Physics, University of Vienna, Boltzmanngasse 5, A-1090, Vienna, Austria. peter.poier@gmail.com.
Peter
P
Poier
Centro de Física de Materiales (CSIC-UPV/EHU) and Materials Physics Center MPC, Paseo Manuel de Lardizabal 5, E-20018 San Sebastián, Spain and Institute of Applied and Computational Mathematics (IACM), Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas (FORTH), GR-71110 Heraklion, Greece.
Petra
P
Bačová
Centro de Física de Materiales (CSIC-UPV/EHU) and Materials Physics Center MPC, Paseo Manuel de Lardizabal 5, E-20018 San Sebastián, Spain and Donostia International Physics Center, Paseo Manuel de Lardizabal 4, E-20018 San Sebastián, Spain.
Angel J
AJ
Moreno
Faculty of Physics, University of Vienna, Boltzmanngasse 5, A-1090, Vienna, Austria. peter.poier@gmail.com.
Christos N
CN
Likos
Faculty of Physics, University of Vienna, Boltzmanngasse 5, A-1090, Vienna, Austria. peter.poier@gmail.com.
Ronald
R
Blaak