title: Diffusion of Polymers through Periodic Networks of Lipid-Based Nanochannels.
abstract: We present an experimental investigation of the diffusion of unfolded polymers in the triply-periodic water-channel network of inverse bicontinuous cubic phases. Depending on the chain size, our results indicate the presence of two different dynamical regimes corresponding to Zimm and Rouse diffusion. We support our findings by scaling arguments based on a combination of blob and effective-medium theories and suggest the presence of a third regime where dynamics is driven by reptation. Our experimental results also show an increasing behavior of the partition coefficient as a function of the polymer molecular weight, indicative of a reduction in the conformational degrees of freedom induced by the confinement.
authors.affiliation: Department of Health Sciences & Technology, ETH Zurich , Schmelzbergstrasse 9, CH-8092 Zurich, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Reza
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-7935-0489
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Ghanbari
authors.affiliation: Department of Health Sciences & Technology, ETH Zurich , Schmelzbergstrasse 9, CH-8092 Zurich, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Salvatore
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Assenza
authors.affiliation: Department of Health Sciences & Technology, ETH Zurich , Schmelzbergstrasse 9, CH-8092 Zurich, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Abhijit
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Saha
authors.affiliation: Department of Health Sciences & Technology, ETH Zurich , Schmelzbergstrasse 9, CH-8092 Zurich, Switzerland.|Department of Materials, ETH Zurich , Wolfgang-Pauli-Strasse 10, 8093 Zurich, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Raffaele
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-5739-2610
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Mezzenga