SYMPOSIUM MINISYMPOSIA

MINISYMPOSIUM ABSTRACT

As the polymer chains such as DNA macromolecues are driven by an electric field toward an impenetrable wall (boundary of the pore in gel), one of the major issues one has to address is how the density and its interface width evolve; the interface width could be considered as a measure of the uncertainty in the spread of the bar code in DNA finger printing among the other important applications in material design. Using a Monte Carlo simulation, we study the density profile and conformations of polymer chains driven by an external field toward an impenetrable adsorbing surface in a (2+1)-dimensional system. A discrete lattice of size Lx*Ly*Lz is considered with a large aspect ratio Lx/Ly with Ly=Lz and field alond x-direction. Polymer chains (each of length Lc with (Lc+1) nodes connected by a bond of unit length) are released from one end of the sample. Apart from excluded volume, polymer-polymer repulsive and polymer-wall attractive interactions are considered. Kink-jump dynamics is used to move chain nodes with a Metropolis algorithm in presence of a field (in general we also consider other dynamics). Evolution of the polymer density profile near the adsorbing surface is studied as a function of temperature, field strength, and molecular weight. Conformation of chains show interesting cross- over behavior from bulk-to-surface as a function of temperature and field. Interface width grows with time with power-laws and saturates to a constant value. We plan to discuss some empirical and scaling laws for the interfacial dynamics resulting from the computer experiments.

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