Free energy of a long semiflexible polymer confined in a spherical cavity.
basic_science · Level V
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- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 24839199.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1039/c4sm00605d.
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Abstract
The free energy and conformational properties of a wormlike chain confined inside a spherical surface are investigated. We show that in the weak-confinement limit, the wormlike chain model exactly reproduces the confinement properties of a Gaussian chain; in such a case the confinement entropy dominates the free energy; in the strong-confinement limit, the free energy is dominated by the bending energy of the chain, which is forced to wrap around the confining surface. We also present a numerical solution within the crossover region between the two limits, solving the differential equation that the probability distribution function satisfies.