Accelerated Transport through Sliding Dynamics of Rodlike Particles in Macromolecular Networks

Transport of rodlike particles in macromolecular networks is critical for many important biological processes and technological applications. Here, we report that speeding-up dynamics occurs once the rod length $L$ reaches around integral multiple of the network mesh size $a_x$. Our results clarify that such a fast diffusion of thick rods with commensurate length follows the sliding dynamics and demonstrate it to be anomalous yet Brownian. Moreover, the good agreement between theoretical analysis and simulations corroborates that sliding dynamics is an intermediate regime between hopping and Brownian dynamics, and suggests a mechanistic interpretation based on the rod-length dependent entropic free energy barrier. The findings bring new insight into the physics of the transport dynamics in confined media of networks, and might be of immediate interest to the optimal design of particle transport in diverse networks.