Related papers: Effective Interactions in Soft Materials
The growing interest in the dynamical properties of colloidal suspensions, both in equilibrium and under an external drive such as shear or pressure flow, requires the development of accurate methods to correctly include hydrodynamic…
The simplicity of hard spheres as a model system is deceptive. Although the particles interact solely through volume exclusion, that nevertheless suffices for a wealth of static and dynamical phenomena to emerge, making the model an…
One characteristic feature of soft matter systems is their strong response to external stimuli. As a consequence they are comparatively easily driven out of their ground state and out of equilibrium, which leads to many of their fascinating…
The structure and degree of order in soft matter and other materials is intimately connected to the nature of the interactions between the particles. One important research goal is to find suitable control mechanisms, to enhance or suppress…
Extreme deformation of soft matter is central to our understanding of the effects of shock, fracture, and phase change in a variety of systems. Yet, despite, the increasing interest in this area, far-from-equilibrium behaviours of soft…
Embedding magnetic colloidal particles in an elastic polymer matrix leads to smart soft materials that can reversibly be addressed from outside by external magnetic fields. We discover a pronounced nonlinear superelastic stress-strain…
Soft particles display highly versatile properties with respect to hard colloids, even more so at fluid-fluid interfaces. In particular, microgels, consisting of a cross-linked polymer network, are able to deform and flatten upon adsorption…
Motivated by recent experiments on colloidal systems with competing attractive and repulsive interactions, we simulate a two-dimensional system of colloids with competing interactions that can undergo fragmentation. In the absence of any…
Active matter exhibits striking behaviour reminiscent of living matter and molecular fluids, and has promising applications in drug delivery or mixing at the micron scale. Active colloidal systems provide important models with simple and…
It is common in the study of a dizzying array of soft matter systems to perform agent-based simulations of particles interacting via conservative and often short-ranged forces. In this context, well-established algorithms for efficiently…
We determine the structure of charge-stabilized colloidal suspensions at low ionic strength over an extended range of particle volume fractions using a combination of light and small angle neutron scattering experiments. The variation of…
Using video-microscopy imaging we demonstrate the existence of a short-ranged equilibrium attraction between heavy silica colloids diffusing on soft surfaces of cross-linked polymer gels. The inter-colloid potential can be tuned by changing…
In biomimetic and biological systems, interactions between surfaces are often mediated by adhesive molecules, nanoparticles, or colloids dispersed in the surrounding solution. We present here a general, statistical-mechanical model for two…
Ionic microgel particles are intriguing systems in which the properties of thermo-responsive polymeric colloids are enriched by the presence of charged groups. In order to rationalize their properties and predict the behaviour of microgel…
Thermoresponsive microgels find widespread use as colloidal model systems, because their temperature-dependent size allows facile tuning of their volume fraction "in situ". However, an interaction potential unifying their behavior across…
Understanding how interparticle interactions govern phase behavior is central to controlling self-organization in multicomponent soft-matter systems. In particular, the role of cross-interactions between unlike components remains…
Charge-stabilized colloidal suspensions can be conveniently described by formally reducing the macroion-microion mixture to an equivalent one-component system of pseudo-particles. Within this scheme, the utility of a linear response…
Multiparticle collision dynamics (MPCD) is a flexible and robust mesoscale computational technique for simulating solvent-mediated hydrodynamic interactions in soft materials. Here, we provide a critical overview of the MPCD method and…
We present a theory of effective electrostatic interactions in polydisperse suspensions of charged macroions, generalizing to mixtures a theory previously developed for monodisperse suspensions. Combining linear response theory with a…
Electrostatic interactions between macroions largely govern the equilibrium thermodynamic and dynamical properties of charge-stabilized colloidal suspensions and polyelectrolyte solutions. Predicting the properties of such complex,…