Enhanced diffusion by binding to the crosslinks of a polymer gel
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s41467-018-06851-5.pdf
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924.73 KB
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Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
752c3378e039d4751e845a122ebfd907
Author(s)
Goodrich, Carl P.
Brenner, Michael P
Ribbeck, Katharina
Date Issued
October 2018
Journal
Nature Communications
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
Citation
Goodrich, Carl P., Michael P. Brenner, and Katharina Ribbeck. “Enhanced Diffusion by Binding to the Crosslinks of a Polymer Gel.” Nature Communications 9, no. 1 (October 19, 2018).
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Creating a selective gel that filters particles based on their interactions is a major goal of nanotechnology, with far-reaching implications from drug delivery to controlling assembly pathways. However, this is particularly difficult when the particles are larger than the gel’s characteristic mesh size because such particles cannot passively pass through the gel. Thus, filtering requires the interacting particles to transiently reorganize the gel’s internal structure. While significant advances, e.g., in DNA engineering, have enabled the design of nano-materials with programmable interactions, it is not clear what physical principles such a designer gel could exploit to achieve selective permeability. We present an equilibrium mechanism where crosslink binding dynamics are affected by interacting particles such that particle diffusion is enhanced. In addition to revealing specific design rules for manufacturing selective gels, our results have the potential to explain the origin of selective permeability in certain biological materials, including the nuclear pore complex.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Biological Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mathematics
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-06851-5
