Compression of Nanoslit Confined Polymer Solutions

Many systems of biophysical and technological interest consist of multiple, interpenetrating chains in a confined volume, a confined, polymer solution. Using nanofluidic approaches developed originally for the study of single chains in confined geometries, we develop an assay to create confined polymer solutions on-chip and then probe the solution response to applied compressive forcing: In our approach, multiple chains are introduced into a nanoslit via hydrodynamic flow and are then concentrated against a barrier that is permeable only to sorvent. For sufficiently high concentration; the compressed solution profile can be described- by a mean-field polymer model based on Doi's two-fluid approach, with the chain free energy described by a GinzburgTtype free energy functional. This theory furnishes a partial differential equation based description of the concentration Profile in-items of a nonlinear Schrodinger-type equation providing a-general theoretical framework for modeling confined polymer solution dynamics.