Berlin 2008 – scientific programme

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DY: Fachverband Dynamik und Statistische Physik

DY 18: Soft matter

DY 18.8: Talk

Wednesday, February 27, 2008, 16:00–16:15, MA 001

Steric molecular recognition: Selecting Components of Hard Rod Mixtures — •Thomas Gruhn and Andreas Richter — Max Planck Institute for Colloids and Interfaces, Science Park Golm, 14424 Potsdam, Germany

The mechanisms of molecular recognition are of great relevance for the development of specific pharmaceutical agents. One important selection method is based on the geometrical matching of the receptor and the molecule of interest. A large molecule cannot enter a small cavity, but, at first sight, a molecule cannot be too small to enter a large cavity. However, we have found that suitably shaped cavities in a substrate can select molecules of a specific size from a polydisperse system by purely steric interactions. We have performed Monte Carlo simulations of a system of hard rods with a length polydispersity in contact with a hard substrate. The planar substrate has rectangular cavities, that match geometrically to one rod component of the mixture. The simulations show that the corresponding rod component can be successfully selected from the system of rods. A direct usage of this effect is the preparation of colloidal rod systems with a narrow length distribution.