Eur. Phys. J. E (2018) 41: 63
https://doi.org/10.1140/epje/i2018-11674-y

Regular Article

Uncooked spaghetti in a colander: Injection of semiflexible polymers in a nanopore

¹ Matière et Systèmes Complexes, Université Paris-Diderot & CNRS (UMR 7057), 10 rue Alice Domon et Léonie Duquet, 75013, Paris, France
² Univ Lyon, Ens de Lyon, Univ Claude Bernard, CNRS, Laboratoire de Physique, F-69342, Lyon, France

^* e-mail: fabien.montel@ens-lyon.fr

Received: 22 February 2018
Accepted: 30 April 2018
Published online: 17 May 2018

Abstract

We study the flow injection of semiflexible polymers in a nanopore with a diameter smaller than the persistence length of the macromolecules. The suction model from de Gennes and Brochard is modified to take into account the effect of the rigidity of the polymer in the Odijk regime. We show that in this case of extreme confinement the flow threshold vanishes slowly and that in the limit of infinitely small nanopore the free energy barrier eventually disappears.