Elongation and fluctuations of semiflexible polymers in a nematic solvent

被引:69
作者
Dogic, Z
Zhang, J
Lau, AWC
Aranda-Espinoza, H
Dalhaimer, P
Discher, DE
Janmey, PA
Kamien, RD
Lubensky, TC
Yodh, AG
机构
[1] Univ Penn, Dept Phys & Astron, Philadelphia, PA 19104 USA
[2] Univ Penn, Dept Chem & Biomol Engn, Philadelphia, PA 19104 USA
[3] Univ Penn, Inst Med & Engn, Philadelphia, PA 19104 USA
关键词
D O I
10.1103/PhysRevLett.92.125503
中图分类号
O4 [物理学];
学科分类号
0702 ;
摘要
We directly visualize single polymers with persistence lengths l(p), ranging from 0.05 to 16 mum, dissolved in the nematic phase of rodlike fd virus. Polymers with a sufficiently large persistence length undergo a coil-rod transition at the isotropic-nematic transition of the background solvent. We quantitatively analyze the transverse fluctuations of the semiflexible polymers and show that at long wavelengths they are driven by the fluctuating nematic background. We extract the Odijk deflection length and the elastic constant of the background nematic phase from the data.
引用
收藏
页码:125503 / 1
页数:4
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