1207.3187 (Rodrigo Ledesma-Aguilar et al.)

Easier sieving through narrower pores: fluctuations and barrier crossing
in flow-driven polymer translocation    [PDF]

Rodrigo Ledesma-Aguilar, Takahiro Sakaue, Julia M. Yeomans

We show that the injection of polymer chains into nanochannels becomes easier as the channel becomes narrower. This counter intuitive result arises because of a decrease in the diffusive time scale of the chains with increasing confinement. The results are obtained by extending the de Gennes blob model of confined polymers, and confirmed by hybrid molecular dynamics - lattice-Boltzmann simulations.

View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1207.3187