Dynamics of Charged Ring Polymers under Gel Confinement

Lu-Jie Huo; Kai-Ru Qu; Zhen-Zhong Yang; Di Jia

doi:10.1007/s10118-025-3291-0

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Dynamics of Charged Ring Polymers under Gel Confinement

RAPID COMMUNICATION | Updated：2025-02-25

- Dynamics of Charged Ring Polymers under Gel Confinement
- Chinese Journal of Polymer Science Vol. 43, Issue 3, Pages: 399-405(2025)
- Affiliations：
  
  a.State Key Laboratory of Polymer Physics and Chemistry, Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China
  b.University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China
  c.Institute of Polymer Science and Engineering, Department of Chemical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
- Author bio：
  
  jiadi11@iccas.ac.cn
- Funds：
- DOI：10.1007/s10118-025-3291-0
  CLC：
- Received：03 December 2024，
  
  Revised：2024-12-31，
  
  Accepted：07 January 2025，
  
  Online First：13 February 2025，
  
  Published：01 March 2025
- Accepted：
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Huo, L. J.; Qu, K. R.; Yang, Z. Z.; Jia, D. Dynamics of charged ring polymers under gel confinement. Chinese J. Polym. Sci. 2025, 43, 399–405

Lu-Jie Huo, Kai-Ru Qu, Zhen-Zhong Yang, et al. Dynamics of Charged Ring Polymers under Gel Confinement[J]. Chinese Journal of Polymer Science, 2025, 43(3): 399-405.
Huo, L. J.; Qu, K. R.; Yang, Z. Z.; Jia, D. Dynamics of charged ring polymers under gel confinement. Chinese J. Polym. Sci. 2025, 43, 399–405 DOI： 10.1007/s10118-025-3291-0.

Lu-Jie Huo, Kai-Ru Qu, Zhen-Zhong Yang, et al. Dynamics of Charged Ring Polymers under Gel Confinement[J]. Chinese Journal of Polymer Science, 2025, 43(3): 399-405. DOI： 10.1007/s10118-025-3291-0.

摘要

The diffusion of charged ring polymers under confinement are ubiquitous in various fields including biomaterials and gene therapy. By using dynamic light scattering

we discover a dynamical transition for charged ring polymers with increasing ring concentration in the gel matrix from a diffusive state to a non-diffusive topological frustrated state.

Abstract

Ring polymers are ubiquitous in various fields including biomaterials

drug release and gene therapy. All of these applications involve the dynamics and diffusion process of ring polymers in a confined environment. By using dynamic light scattering (DLS)

we discovered a dynamical transition for charged ring polymers with increasing ring concentration in the gel matrix from a diffusive state to a non-diffusive topological frustrated state with a more compact conformation. When the ring polymer size is smaller than the mesh size of the gel matrix

the rings are diffusive at lo

w concentration of 5 g/L. The ring diffusion coefficient in the gel matrix is an order of magnitude smaller than that of rings in solution

obeying the Ogston’s model. At high ring concentration of 40 g/L

the collective dynamical behavior of the charged rings exhibits a topologically frustrated non-diffusive state

which may originate from the inter-ring threading with the external confinement from the gel matrix. Based on our previous theoretical work

we also conjectured that in such a non-diffusive state

the ring polymers might adopt a more compact conformation with the overall size exponent

=1/3.

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references

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