2026-10-14T08:18:48Z https://api.figshare.com/v2/oai

oai:figshare.com:article/33993977 2026-09-25T08:17:44Z category_1 category_915 category_21 category_39 portal_63 item_type_2 month_year_09_2026

Negative Interfacial Tension Driven by Intrinsic Molecular Disorder Chuan Tang (1938364) Yifan Huang (1371063) Chun-Lai Ren (8678247) Qiyun Tang (124659) Yu-Qiang Ma (8678250) Biophysics Physical Sciences not elsewhere classified Biotechnology Ecology δγ ∼ −< law size distribution law cluster distributions intrinsic molecular disorder general physicochemical mechanism diverse experimental observations intrinsically disordered proteins effective interfacial tension conserved density field two fields χ ϵ </ sub effective parameters disordered biomolecules junction field field theories >< sub work reveals random copolymers polydisperse assemblies oriented framework numerical calculations negative values grained simulations fundamental challenge explicitly links conventional mean Intrinsically disordered molecular systems, such as random copolymers and intrinsically disordered proteins, exhibit scale-invariant, power-law cluster distributions that cannot be explained by conventional mean-field theories. A fundamental challenge is to understand how sequence randomness, which cannot be averaged into effective parameters, drives the formation of such polydisperse assemblies. Using a minimal coupled field theory that explicitly links a conserved density field to a nonconserved “junction” field representing stochastic binding site density, we show that the attraction between two fields χ, together with the fluctuations in the junction field <i>T</i>_ϵ, renormalizes the effective interfacial tension to negative values: Δγ ∼ −<i>T</i>_ϵχ². This negative interfacial tension suppresses coalescence and stabilizes a scale-invariant ensemble of clusters with a power-law size distribution, as confirmed by both numerical calculations and coarse-grained simulations of sequence-disordered biomolecules, and are consistent with diverse experimental observations. Our work reveals a general physicochemical mechanism by which intrinsic molecular disorder and fluctuations jointly govern phase separation in systems with built-in randomness, providing a unifying, chemistry-oriented framework for understanding and engineering heterogeneous soft matter systems. 2026-09-25T00:00:00Z Dataset Media 10.1021/jacs.6c10169.s004 https://figshare.com/articles/media/Negative_Interfacial_Tension_Driven_by_Intrinsic_Molecular_Disorder/33993977 CC BY-NC 4.0