Synthetic and natural nanomaterials with self-propelling mechanisms continue to be explored to boost chain mobility beyond normal reptation in the crowded environments of entangled chains. Here we employ scaling theory and numerical simulations to demonstrate that activating one chain end of a singular or isolated chain boosts entanglement-constrained chain reptation from the one-dimensional diffusive mobility as described by the de Gennes–Edwards–Doi model to ballistic motion along the entanglement tube contour. The active chain is effectively screened from the constraint of entanglements on length scales exceeding the tube size.

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• Drug delivery
• Reptation
• Living matter & active matter
• Self-propelled particles
• Single polymer chains
• Molecular dynamics
• Polymer scaling theory