Longstanding mechanistic questions about the role of protecting osmolyte trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO) that favors protein folding and the denaturing osmolyte urea are addressed by studying their effects on the folding of uncharged polymer chains. Using atomistic molecular dynamics simulations, we show that 1 M TMAO and 7 M urea solutions act dramatically differently on these model polymer chai...

Introduction The conformation of adsorbed polymers on surfaces is critical in the success of many industrial applications, such as flocculation and dispersion. For flocculation, adsorbed polymers with large loops and tails perform better due to an increased collision efficiency. Direct observation of the conformation of a polymer chain on a solid surface will aid in the design of new flocculant...

Longstanding mechanistic questions about the role of protecting osmolyte trimethylamine N oxide (TMAO) which favors protein folding and the denaturing osmolyte urea are addressed by studying their effects on the folding of uncharged polymer chains. Using atomistic molecular dynamics simulations, we show that 1-M TMAO and 7-M urea solutions act dramatically differently on these model polymer cha...

In the field of inherently conducting polymers, polyaniline (Pani) has elicited tremendous interest due to its promising electrical properties and unique redox tunability. Synthetic routes involving the use of polyelectrolytes have significantly improved the processability of polyaniline. Recently, a template guided synthesis catalyzed by an enzyme, horseradish peroxidase (HRP), has provided a ...

We present results of molecular dynamics simulations of strong, exible polyelectrolyte chains in solution with added salt. The eeect of added salt on the polyelectrolyte chain structure is fully treated for the rst time as a function of polymer density. Systems above and below the Manning condensation limit are studied. The chain structure is intimately tied to the ion density near the chain ev...

0014-3057/$ see front matter 2008 Elsevier Ltd doi:10.1016/j.eurpolymj.2008.07.014 * Corresponding authors. Tel.: +1 865 5763820; (G. Cheng), tel.: +1 865 5744974; fax: +1 865 57415 E-mail addresses: [email protected] (G. Chen (K. Hong). The conformation of newly synthesized amphiphilic poly(methoxyoligo(ethylene oxide) norbornenyl esters) macro-homopolymers in dilute solutions of toluene-d8 and ...

The conformation and clusterization of comblike polymers of polystyrene densely grafted with oligo(ethylene glycol) (OEG) side chains in 1.0 wt % solutions of D2O, toluene-d8, and methanol-d4 was investigated as a function of the degree of polymerization (DP) of the backbone by small angle neutron scattering (SANS). Each side chain had four EG repeat units, and the DP of the polystyrene backbon...

Solution-crystallization is studied for two polyfluorene polymers possessing different side-chain structures. Thermal analysis and temperature-dependent optical spectroscopy are used to clarify the nature of the crystallization process, while X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy reveal important differences in the resulting microstructures. It is shown that the planar-zigzag chain...

The behavior of linear polymer chains in dilute solution flows has an established history. Polymers often possess more complex architectures, however, such as branched, dendritic, or ring structures. A major challenge lies in understanding how these nonlinear chain topologies affect the dynamic properties in nonequilibrium conditions, in both dilute and entangled solutions. In this work, we int...