Jamming of semiflexible polymers

Abstract

We study jamming in model freely rotating polymers as a function of chain length $N$ and bond angle ${\theta }_0$. The volume fraction at jamming, ${\varphi }_J({\theta }_0)$, is minimal for rigid-rod-like chains (${\theta }_0=0$), and increases monotonically with increasing ${\theta }_0\le \pi /2$. In contrast to flexible polymers, marginally jammed states of freely rotating polymers are highly hypostatic, even when bond and angle constraints are accounted for. Large aspect ratio (small ${\theta }_0$) chains behave comparably to stiff fibers: resistance to large-scale bending plays a major role in their jamming phenomenology. Low aspect ratio (large ${\theta }_0$) chains behave more like flexible polymers, but still jam at much lower densities due to the presence of frozen-in 3-body correlations corresponding to the fixed bond angles. Long-chain systems jam at lower $\varphi$ and are more hypostatic at jamming than short-chain systems. Implications of these findings for polymer solidification are discussed.

References in corpus (2)

• Jamming at Zero Temperature and Zero Applied Stress: the Epitome of Disorder
• The packing of granular polymer chains

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Nonmonotonic dependence of polymer glass mechanical response on chain bending stiffness