Adsorption-Desorption Kinetics of Soft Particles.

Adsorption-desorption processes are ubiquitous in physics, chemistry, and biology. Models usually assume hard particles, but within the realm of soft matter physics the adsorbing particles are compressible. A minimal 1D model reveals that softness fundamentally changes the kinetics: Below the desorption time scale, a logarithmic increase of the particle density replaces the usual Renyi jamming plateau, and the subsequent relaxation to equilibrium can be nonmonotonic and much faster than for hard particles. These effects will impact the kinetics of self-assembly and reaction-diffusion processes.