Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
Physical Chemistry Seminar Series

Professor Achille Giacometti, Ca’ Foscari University, Venice, Italy
March 3, 2024 —2:00pm
Tykeson 140

Phase behaviour and self-assembly properties of semiflexible polymers in solution

This presentation explores the phase behaviour and self-assembly properties of semiflexible polymers in solution, focusing on temperature dependence and bending constraints. The talk is structured in two parts. In the first part, I will examine the phase behaviour of a single semiflexible polymer, comparing two types of bending constraints. The first is the traditional elastic penalty used in the worm-like chain model, while the second is an entropic constraint arising from steric effects introduced by a side sphere. I will demonstrate that these constraints lead to markedly different phase behaviours at low temperatures.

In the second part, I will extend the analysis to multiple polymer chains in solution, investigating their self-assembly properties under each bending constraint. Although the detailed low-temperature behaviour differs between the two constraints, the general self-assembly mechanism appears to exhibit universal characteristics.