Anomalous Dynamics of a Polymer Chain Confined in a Static Porous Environment

Understanding polymer dynamics through a porous environment is relevant to many areas of biology, materials engineering, and physics. Porous environments have been repeatedly employed to separate and characterize synthetic and biological polymers, such as in chromatography and gel electrophoresis. Additionally, the motion of macromolecules through the dense cellular environment is crucial to many biological processes and drug delivery. Even with such a broad range of applicability, single chain dynamics under such confinement remains elusive. In this work, we employ Langevin dynamics simulations in conjunction with statistical mechanical theory to understand chain dynamics in a porous environment. As a simple model of a porous environment, we choose a one dimensional network of spherical cavities connected by small pores. Theoretically we model dynamics by constructing the free energy due to partitioning the chain between different chambers. In both simulations and theory we calculate the anomalous diffusion as a function of the chamber size and the chain length at the segmental and center of mass scales. These studies provide a foundation for understanding dynamics of polymers in more complex porous environments.