Related papers: Gel-forming patchy colloids and network glass form…
Understanding the relationship between the microscopic structure and topology of a material and its macroscopic properties is a fundamental challenge across a wide range of systems. Here, we investigate the viscoelasticity of DNA nanostar…
Determining the onset of rigidity in gels is a fundamental challenge with significant practical implications across different applications. Limited-valence, or patchy-particle systems have proven to be a valuable model to study the…
Molecular dynamics simulations have been employed to study the formation of a physical (thermoreversible) gel by amphiphilic A-B-A triblock copolymers in aqueous solution. In order to mimic the structure of hydrogel-forming polypeptides…
This perspective article reviews arguments that glass-forming liquids are different from those of standard liquid-state theory, which typically have a viscosity in the mPa$\cdot$s range and relaxation times of order picoseconds. These…
In this letter, we investigate several aspects related to the effect of hydrodynamics interactions on phase separation-induced gelation of colloidal particles. We explain physically the observation of Tanaka and Araki[Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf…
We assess the validity of "microscopic" approaches of glass-forming liquids based on the sole k nowledge of the static pair density correlations. To do so we apply them to a benchmark provided by two liquid models that share very similar…
In a previous paper [J. Chem. Phys. 129, 024506 (2008)] we studied a 3 dimensional lattice model of a network-forming fluid, recently proposed in order to investigate water anomalies. Our semi-analytical calculation, based on a…
Colloid-polymer mixtures can undergo spinodal decomposition into colloid-rich and colloid-poor regions. Gelation results when interconnected colloid-rich regions solidify. We show that this occurs when these regions undergo a glass…
Molecular dynamic simulations were employed to study a water-like model confined between hydrophobic and hydrophilic plates. The phase behavior of this system is obtained for different distances between the plates and particle-plate…
Glasses are structurally liquid-like, but mechanically solid-like. Most attempts to understand glasses start from liquid state theory. Here we take the opposite point of view, and use concepts from solid state physics. We determine the…
We critically discuss the application of the Wertheim's theory to classes of complex associating fluids that can be today engineered in the laboratory as patchy colloids and to the prediction of their peculiar gas-liquid phase diagrams. Our…
Gels in soft-matter systems are an important nonergodic state of matter. We study a colloid-polymer mixture which is quenched by increasing the polymer concentration, from a fluid to a gel. Using confocal microscopy, we study both the…
Within the framework of the mode-coupling theory of super-cooled liquids, we investigate new phenomena in colloidal systems on approach to their glass transitions. When the inter-particle potential contains an attractive part, besides the…
We present a detailed numerical study of multi-component colloidal gels interacting sterically and obtained by arrested phase separation. Under deformation, we found that the interplay between the different intertwined networks is key.…
We investigate the network topologies of an ensemble of telechelic polymers. The telechelic polymers serve as links between nodes, which consist of aggregates of their telechelic endgroups. Our analysis shows that the degree distribution is…
We consider patchy gold nanoparticles decorated by liquid crystalline ligands. The cases of two, three, four and six symmetrically arranged patches of ligands are discussed, as well as the cases of their equatorial and uniform arrangement.…
We evaluate thermodynamic, geometric and dynamic properties of a short-ranged square well binary mixture to provide a coherent picture of this simple, but rich, model for colloidal interactions. In particular, we compare the location, in…
We discuss a class of models for particulate gels in which the particle contacts are described by an effective interaction combining a two-body attraction and a three-body angular repulsion. Using molecular dynamics, we show how varying the…
Inverse patchy colloids are nano- to micro-scale particles with a surface divided into differently charged regions. This class of colloids combines directional, selective bonding with a relatively simple particle design: owing to the…
The postulate of the existence of a jamming phase diagram (Liu and Nagel, Nature 396, 21 EP (1998aa)) provides a theoretical basis for the classification of a wide range of amorphous solids (colloidal, molecular and emulsion glasses,…