Figure 4.

Diffusion of precursors along the fiber toward the end. (A) Representative AFM images of fibers immobilized at different times on a surface after growth free in solution. Scale bar 50 nm. The green insets show the cross-section side view of the fiber along the dotted green line in the corresponding figures. The arrows indicate the position of the precursor aggregates. (B) Simulated coarse-grained (CG) fiber structure (16 hexamers, 8 nm) with one molecule of trimer showing the diffusion at different times over a 500 ns simulation. Different colors (from red to blue) indicate the position of the trimer at different times (from 0 to 500 ns). The fiber is represented as a gray surface. (C–E) CG MD simulation of fiber (outlined in black) and single trimer molecules over time. Relative density of trimer added to a preassembled fiber is averaged over 400 simulations at the start of the simulation (0 ns), after 60 ns, and after 500 ns, respectively. The color bar representing the density plots in (C)–(E) is normalized from 0 to 1.