Related papers: Gel-forming patchy colloids and network glass form…
Hybrid molecular dynamics/Monte Carlo simulations used to study melts of unentangled, thermoreversibly associating supramolecular polymers. In this first of a series of papers, we describe and validate a model that is effective in…
We report, for the first time, some experimental observations regarding a new type of long range interaction between rigid particles that prevails when they are suspended in an soft elastic gel. A denser particle submerges itself to a…
Nanoparticle gels have attracted considerable attention due to their highly tunable properties. One strategy for producing nanoparticle gels involves using strong local attractions between polymeric molecules, such as DNA hybridization or…
Using computer simulations, we study the dynamic arrest in a schematic model of colloid-polymer mixtures combining short-ranged attractions with long-ranged repulsions. The arrested gel is a dilute rigid network of colloidal particles…
Patchy colloidal platelets with convex, non-spherical shapes have been realized with different materials at length scales ranging from nanometers to microns. While the assembly of these hard shapes tends to maximize edge-to-edge contacts,…
Applying an electric field to an aqueous colloidal dispersion establishes a complex interplay of forces among the highly mobile simple ions, the more highly charged but less mobile colloidal spheres, and the surrounding water. This…
Identifying the necessary conditions for the onset of rigidity in a gel remains a challenge. It has been suggested that local particle coordination could be used to establish such conditions, but rigid gels occur for various coordination…
We study the formation of a colloidal gel by means of Molecular Dynamics simulations of a model for colloidal suspensions. A slowing down with gel-like features is observed at low temperatures and low volume fractions, due to the formation…
We study colloidal gels formed by competing electrostatic repulsion and short-range attraction by means of extensive numerical simulations under external shear. We show that, upon varying the repulsion strength, the gel structure and its…
Thin cylindrical tethers are common lipid bilayer membrane structures, arising in situations ranging from micromanipulation experiments on artificial vesicles to the dynamic structure of the Golgi apparatus. We study the shape and formation…
A transition from solid-like to liquid-like behavior occurs when colloidal gels are subjected to a prolonged exposure to a steady shear. This phenomenon, which is characterized by a yielding point, is found to be strongly dependent on the…
The electrostatic interaction between colloidal particles trapped at the interface between two immiscible electrolyte solutions is studied in the limit of small inter-particle distances. Within an appropriate model exact analytic…
Quasi-two-dimensional (quasi-2D) colloidal hard-sphere suspensions confined in a slit geometry are widely used as two dimensional (2D) model systems in experiments that probe the glassy relaxation dynamics of 2D systems. However, the…
Colloidal particles with appropriate wetting properties can become very strongly trapped at an interface between two immiscible fluids. We have harnessed this phenomenon to create a new class of soft materials with intriguing and…
Water/solid interfaces are relevant to a broad range of physicochemical phenomena and technological processes such as corrosion, lubrication, heterogeneous catalysis and electrochemistry. Although many fields have contributed to rapid…
Colloidal gels consist of percolating networks of interconnected arms. Their mechanical properties depend on the individual arms, and on their collective behaviour. We use numerical simulations to pull on a single arm, built from a model…
Using molecular dynamics simulations we study the temperature-density phase diagram of a simple model system of particles in two dimensions. In addition to translational degrees of freedom, each particle has two internal states and…
Correlated structures are intimately connected to intriguing phenomena exhibited by a variety of disordered systems such as soft colloidal gels, bio-polymer networks and colloidal suspensions near a shear jamming transition. The universal…
Multicomponent gel systems have garnered much interest due to their compelling mechanical properties in the past decade. Yet, some mechanisms associated with multicomponent gels, such as sequential gelation, have been explored primarily in…
We report experimental and computational observations of dynamic contact networks for colloidal suspensions undergoing shear thickening. The dense suspensions are comprised of sterically stabilized poly(methyl methacrylate) hard sphere…