TY  - JOUR
AU  - Junghans, C.
AU  - Bachmann, M.
AU  - Janke, W.
TI  - Statistical Mechanics of Aggregation and Crystallization for Semiflexible Polymers
JO  - epl
VL  - 87
SN  - 0295-5075
CY  - Les Ulis
PB  - EDP Sciences
M1  - PreJuSER-5135
SP  - 40002
PY  - 2009
N1  - This work is partially supported by the DFG (German Science Foundation) under Grant No. JA 483/24-1/2/3, the Leipzig Graduate School of Excellence "BuildMoNa", and by the Max Planck Society. Support by a NIC supercomputer time grant (No. hlz11) of the Forschungszentrum Julich is acknowledged.
AB  - By means of multicanonical computer simulations, we investigate thermodynamic properties of the aggregation of interacting semiflexible polymers. We analyze a mesoscopic bead-stick model, where nonbonded monomers interact via Lennard-Jones forces. Aggregation turns out to be a process, in which the constituents experience strong structural fluctuations, similar to peptides in coupled folding-binding cluster formation processes. In contrast to a recently studied related proteinlike hydrophobic-polar heteropolymer model, aggregation and crystallization are separate processes for a homopolymer with the same small bending rigidity. Rather stiff semiflexible polymers form a liquid-crystal-like phase, as expected. In analogy to the heteropolymer study, we find that the first-order-like aggregation transition of the complexes is accompanied by strong system-size-dependent hierarchical surface effects. In consequence, the polymer aggregation is a phase-separation process with entropy reduction. Copyright (C) EPLA, 2009
KW  - J (WoSType)
LB  - PUB:(DE-HGF)16
UR  - <Go to ISI:>//WOS:000270146400002
DO  - DOI:10.1209/0295-5075/87/40002
UR  - https://juser.fz-juelich.de/record/5135
ER  -