Packing structure of semiflexible rings

GÓMEZ, LEOPOLDO R.; GARCÍA, NICOLÁS A.; PÖSCHEL, THORSTEN

PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

NATL ACAD SCIENCES

Año: 2020 vol. 117 p. 3382 - 3387

0027-8424

Understanding the structure of disordered assemblies of ring molecules is key for the description of polymer rings and cyclic biomolecules. Here we study the geometrical and topological properties of these systems by imaging disordered assemblies of macroscopic rubber bands through X-ray tomography. Commonly, these systems contain networks of interthreading bands which percolate the whole assembly. But when the bands are much longer than the container, we observe the formation of fully entangled states, where each band is in the neighborhood of the others. Thus, confined semiflexible ring macromolecules are expected to have extremely correlated configurations with very slow glassy-like dynamics.