Translocation of Heterogeneous Flexible Polymers Assisted by Binding Particles

Abstract

A polymer chain usually contains two or more types of monomeric species from the perspective of polymer chemistry, which poses a challenge to the understanding of structure-property relationships. It is of course true in the field of polymer translocation. In the present work, I investigate the translocation dynamics of heterogeneous flexible polymers composed of two types of monomers labeled A and B through a nanopore assisted by binding particles (BPs) by using the coarse-grained Langevin dynamics simulations in two-dimensional domains. Specifically, multiblock copolymers with different block lengths and monomeric components are considered. I critically examine how the translocation dynamics responds to the variations in the block length and the monomeric content. Interestingly, it is found that the periodic structure of a multiblock copolymer causes an obvious fingerprint feature in the residence time of individual monomers in which the number of peaks is exactly equal to the number of blocks. These findings provide a basic understanding about the sequence-dynamics relationship for the BPs-assisted translocation of heterogeneous flexible polymers.