Simulation of polymers in a curved box: Variable range bonding models

Abstract

We propose new polymer models for Monte Carlo simulation and apply them to a polymer chain confined in a relatively thin box which has both curved and flat sides, and show that either an ideal or an excluded-volume chain spends more time in the curved region than in the flat region. The ratio of the probability of finding a chain in the curved region and in flat region increases exponentially with increasing chain length. The results for ideal chains are quantitatively consistent with a previously published theory. We find that the same effect appears with excluded-volume chains and a similar scaling relation can be applied to them up to a certain length of the polymer.