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Updated: Aug 15, 2026

Microfluidic Fabrication of Polymeric and Biohybrid Fibers with Predesigned Size and Shape
Published on: January 8, 2014
Semiflexible polymers confined in soft tubes
F Brochard-Wyart1, T Tanaka, N Borghi
1Laboratoire PCC Institut Curie/CNRS UMR 168, 11 rue P. & M. Curie, 75005 Paris, France. brochard@curie.fr
Abstract:
We discuss various conformations for a polymer (of persistent length l(p)) confined into a deformable tube (the wall being a lipid bilayer with a certain surface tension sigma and curvature energy K). Our study assumes that there is no adsorption of the chain on the wall. Three states are compared: (a) an unperturbed tube, plus a confined chain, (b) a tube swollen in all the region surrounding the chain (similar to a snake eating a sausage), (c) a globule, a roughly spherical coil surrounded by a strongly deformed tube. We construct a (qualitative) phase diagram for these systems with two variables: the surface tension sigma and the degree of polymerization N. Our main conclusion is that "globules" usually win over "snakes".
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