Lu Jie Huo^{a, b}, Kai Ru Qu^c, Zhen Zhong Yang^c, Di Jia^{*a, b}

Chin. J. Polym. Sci. 2025. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10118-025-3291-0

Ring polymers are ubiquitous in various fields including biomaterials, drug release and gene therapy. All of these applications involve the dynamics and diffusion process of ring polymers in a confined environment. By using dynamic light scattering (DLS), we discovered a dynamical transition for charged ring polymers with increasing ring concentration in the gel matrix from a diffusive state to a non-diffusive topological frustrated state with a more compact conformation. When the ring polymer size is smaller than the mesh size of the gel matrix, the rings are diffusive at low concentration of 5 g/L. The ring diffusion coefficient in the gel matrix is an order of magnitude smaller than that of rings in solution, obeying the Ogston’s model. At high ring concentration of 40 g/L, the collective dynamical behavior of the charged rings exhibits a topologically frustrated non-diffusive state, which may originate from the inter-ring threading with the external confinement from the gel matrix. Based on our previous theoretical work, we also conjectured that in such a non-diffusive state, the ring polymers might adopt a more compact conformation with the overall size exponent ν = 1/3.

文章链接：https://doi.org/10.1007/s10118-025-3291-0