Polymer Translocation Through Nanopore : A Monte Carlo Study

Abstract

In this thesis we investigate polymer translocation through nanopore without external driving force. We used the two dimensional Monte Carlo simulation with Bond Fluctuating method. To prevail over the entropic barrier, we have taken our system consideration that placing polymer in the middle of nanopore. Thus, we studied the static properties of linear polymer like mean square end to end distance ⟨R2 ⟩ and mean square radius of gyration ⟨R2 g ⟩ as a function of chain length N. We found that the scaling relations of ⟨R2 ⟩ and R2 g ⟩ with polymer size N,as ⟨R2 ⟩ ∼ N1.49 and ⟨R2 ⟩ ∼ N1.512 which are in agreement with Flory prediction of real polymer chain. We also studied the dynamic properties of linear polymers by investigating diffusion coefficient(D) and escape time (τ ) with chain length N, as D ∼ N −0.93 and τ ∼ N2.512 which are in agreement with Rouse model prediction that are D ∼ N −1 and τ ∼ N1+2ν , where ν = 3 4 for 2D . In this work, we have also examine the interplay between the pore size and escape time τ while simulating the translocation process.