Regensburg 2016 – wissenschaftliches Programm
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CPP: Fachverband Chemische Physik und Polymerphysik
CPP 3: Polymer Networks and Elastomers
CPP 3.9: Vortrag
Montag, 7. März 2016, 12:00–12:15, H40
Probing Polyethylene Glycol Elasticity by Single Molecule Force Spectroscopy and Molecular Dynamic Simulation — •Susanne Liese1, Manuel Gensler2, Stefanie Krysiak3, Andreas Achazi4, Beate Paulus4, Thorsten Hugel5, Jürgen P. Rabe2, and Roland R. Netz1 — 1Freie Universität Berlin, Fachbereich Physik — 2Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Department of Physics — 3Technische Universität München, Physik Department — 4Freie Universität Berlin, Fachbereich Chemie — 5Universität Freiburg, Institute of Physical Chemistry
Polyethylene glycol (PEG) is a water soluble, non-toxic and very flexible polymer, which is widely used in medical and chemical applications. We investigate the elastic properties of PEG in a multi-scale approach based on a combination of ab-initio calculations, molecular dynamic simulations and single molecule force spectroscopy. A detailed analysis of the force-extension relation shows, that the entropy remains almost constant, if the polymer is stretched, which can be explained by a combination of chain stretching and conformational changes of single PEG-monomers. Our findings challenge the basic notion of polymer science, according to which polymers are entropic springs, which react to stretching with a loss of conformational entropy. Generalizing our results might be of great importance to other water soluble systems as well.