Jamming Transitions in Confined Driven Polymer in Solutions

In the present work, we study the compression of a confined polymer in a fluid pushed by a large sphere with a diameter comparable to the channel width through the use of lattice-Boltzmann molecular dynamics (LBMD) simulations. We examined the chain's deformation when there is a) purely repulsive and b) attractive Lennard-Jones (LJ) potential applied between the monomers. The sphere's velocity is varied over 3 orders of magnitude and the chain is in a non-dense state at low sphere's velocities for both repulsive and attractive monomer interactions. At v > v*, the back end of the chain is in a jammed state with high density and low mean square displacement(MSD) values and the front end is in unjammed state with low density and high MSD indicating a pseudo two-state coexistence. This transition is also revealed through the study of volume per monomer and MSD as a function of sphere's velocity.