Coil-globule transition of a single semiflexible chain in slitlike confinement

Single polymer chains undergo a phase transition from coiled conformations to globular conformations as the effective attraction between monomers becomes strong enough. In this work, we investigated the coil-globule transition of a semiflexible chain confined between two parallel plates, i.e. a slit, using the lattice model and Pruned-enriched Rosenbluth method (PERM) algorithm. We find that as the slit height decreases, the critical attraction for the coil-globule transition changes non-monotonically due to the competition of the confinement free energies of the coiled and globular states. In wide (narrow) slits, the coiled state experiences more (less) confinement free energy, and hence the transition becomes easier (more difficult). In addition, we find that the transition becomes less sharp with the decreasing slit height. Here, the sharpness refers to the sensitivity of thermodynamic quantities when varying the attraction around the critical value. The relevant experiments can be performed for DNA condensation in microfluidic devices.
Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology Center
National Science Foundation (U.S.) (CBET-1335938)