Bundling in brushes of directed and semiflexible polymers

Abstract

We explore the effect of an attractive interaction between parallel-aligned polymers, which are perpendicularly grafted on a substrate. Such an attractive interaction could be due to, e.g., reversible cross-links. The competition between permanent grafting favoring a homogeneous state of the polymer brush and the attraction, which tends to induce in-plane collapse of the aligned polymers, gives rise to an instability of the homogeneous phase to a bundled state. In this latter state the in-plane translational symmetry is spontaneously broken and the density is modulated with a finite wavelength, which is set by the length scale of transverse fluctuations of the grafted polymers. We analyze the instability for two models of aligned polymers: directed polymers with a line tension and weakly bending chains with a bending stiffness.

7 pages, 5 figures, final version as published in PRE

References in corpus (5)

• Cross-linker unbinding and self-similarity in bundled cytoskeletal networks
• Entropic forces generated by grafted semiflexible polymers
• Phase transition to bundles of flexible supramolecular polymers
• Force-extension relation of cross-linked anisotropic polymer networks
• Crosslinked biopolymer bundles: crosslink reversibility leads to cooperative binding/unbinding phenomena

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Brushes of semiflexible polymers in equilibrium and under flow in super-hydrophobic regime
• Arrested spinodal decomposition in polymer brush collapsing in poor solvent
• Bundle formation in parallel aligned polymers with competing interactions
• Cross-link induced shrinkage of grafted Gaussian chains
• From Octopus to Dendrite - Semiflexible Polyelectrolyte Brush Condensates in Trivalent Counterion Solution
• Effect of grafting on the binding transition of two flexible polymers
• Structure of one-component polymer brushes: Groundstate considerations