Self assembled linear polymeric chains with tuneable semiflexibility using isotropic interactions.

Area of Science:

• Soft Matter Physics
• Polymer Science
• Colloid Science

Background:

• Spherical symmetric potentials typically lead to isotropic interactions.
• Achieving directional self-assembly from isotropic potentials is a significant challenge.
• Understanding equilibrium polymer formation is crucial for materials science.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce a novel two-body spherically symmetric potential for self-assembling linear semiflexible polymeric chains.
• To demonstrate control over polymer properties like persistence length and branching.
• To investigate the phase behavior and self-organization of these emergent polymers.

Main Methods:

• Development of a specific two-body isotropic potential function.
• Computational simulations to observe particle self-assembly and polymer formation.
• Analysis of chain length distributions, phase transitions, and structural organization.

Main Results:

• Particles self-assemble into linear, semiflexible polymer chains with exponential length distributions.
• Tunable control over polymer persistence length and branching is achieved by adjusting potential parameters.
• Observed phase transitions include a disordered phase, an ordered line-hexagonal phase, and a branched gel-like phase.
• An intermediate nematic phase was identified with a modified potential.

Conclusions:

• The proposed potential effectively generates equilibrium polymers with tunable properties from simple isotropic interactions.
• This model provides a computationally efficient method to study long polymer dynamics and colloidal self-assembly.
• The findings offer a pathway for experimental tuning of colloidal interactions to create self-assembling polymer chains.