Sequential adsorption processes

Project description

The random deposition of particles onto a surface is a process which arises in many subject areas, and determining its efficiency in terms of the coverage attained is a difficult problem.

In one-dimension the problem can be viewed as how many cars can be parked along a road of a certain length; this problem is similar to a problem in administering gene therapy in which polymers need to be designed to package and deliver DNA into cells.

Here one wishes to know the coverage obtained when one uses a variety of polymer lengths to bind to strands of DNA.

The project will involve the solution of recurrence relations, and differential equations, by a mixture of asymptotic techniques and stochastic simulations.