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Updated: Sep 19, 2025

Phase Diagram Characterization Using Magnetic Beads as Liquid Carriers
Published on: September 4, 2015
Equilibrium phases and phase transitions in multicritical magnetic polymers
Alberto Raiola1,2, Emanuele Locatelli1,2, Davide Marenduzzo3
1Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia, Università di Padova, Via Marzolo 8, I-35131 Padova, Italy.
Abstract:
Magnetic polymers are examples of composite soft materials in which the competition between the large configurational entropy of the soft substrate (polymer) and the magnetic interaction may give rise to rich equilibrium phase diagrams as well as non-standard critical phenomena. Here, we study a self-avoiding walk model decorated by Ising spins of value 0 and ±1 that interact according to a Blume-Emery-Griffith-like Hamiltonian. By using mean-field approximations and Monte Carlo simulations, we report the existence of three distinct equilibrium phases: swollen disordered, compact ordered, and compact disordered. Notably, these phases are separated by phase boundaries that meet at multicritical points, whose nature and location are tunable and depend on the strength of the interactions. In our conclusion, we discuss the relevance of the phase diagrams we have obtained to the physics of magnetic polymers and their application to chromatin biophysics.
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