Driven Polymer Translocation into a Crosslinked Gel

In a typical polymer translocation setup, a thin membrane is used to separate two chambers and a polyelectrolyte is driven by an electric field to translocate from one side of the membrane to the other via a small nanopore. However, the high translocation rate that results from the forces required to drive this process makes optical and/or electrical analysis of the translocating polymer challenging. Using coarse-grained Langevin Dynamics simulations we investigate how the translocation process can be slowed down by placing a crosslinked gel on the trans-side of the membrane. Since the driving electric field is localized in the neighborhood of the nanopore, electrophoretic migration is only achieved by a ``pushing'' action from the polymer segment residing in the nanopore. For the case of a flexible polymer we find that the polymer fills the gel pores via multiple ``herniation'' processes, whereas for a semi-flexible chain in a tight gel there are no hernias and the polymer follows a smooth curvilinear path. Moreover, for the case of a semi-flexible polymer the gel makes the translocation process more uniform by reducing the acceleration at the end of the process.