Executive Summary : | The universal mechanism of particle transport at finite temperature is diffusion. However, it is a slow process and is enhanced in various living systems with the help of active transport processes. The entities that can adapt to the active processes by consuming internal sources of energy are called active matter. The realm of active matter is very diverse as they are observed in biological as well as synthetic systems. Recently, the synthetic micro/nano active materials with properties that lead to their usage in transportation, responsive materials that are able to change their structures autonomously or in response to external stimuli is in demand, and research in this area is being actively pursued. One of the common mechanisms that synthetic active particles utilise for acquiring active force is the diffusiophoresis mechanism, which is the spontaneous motion of any dispersed particles in a fluid due to the concentration gradient of dissolved molecular substances in the fluid. The scope of this project lies in a class of synthetic active particles that can change their shape and acquires activity by self-diffusiophoretic mechanisms, wherein the perpetual conversion of chemical energy into mechanical energy is responsible for driving the system out-of-equilibrium. We plan to investigate the chemically active polymers that experiences an effective local tangential active force along its backbone by virtue of the chemical reaction taking place on various monomers distributed along its length. These chemically active monomers act as a source of local active force generation on the polymer. The two classes of active polymers that we target in this project are (i) linear polymers and (ii) ring polymers, taking the motivation from the biological microtubule filaments motility and DNA loops. We plan to address the problems with the help of a coarse-grained simulation approach of the polymer and the solvent. The proposed work will be beneficial to the entire polymer scientist community as the detailed investigations on the out-of-equilibrium polymers will enable us to contrast its structural and dynamical properties with its passive or equilibrium counterpart. |