Related papers: Brush-like Interactions between Thermoresponsive M…
Contacts between particles in dense, sheared suspensions are believed to underpin much of their rheology. Roughness and adhesion are known to constrain the relative motion of particles, and thus globally affect the shear response, but an…
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…
Molecular dynamics simulations of a short-chain polymer melt between two brush-covered surfaces under shear have been performed. The end-grafted polymers which constitute the brush have the same chemical properties as the free chains in the…
The transport of particles across lipid-bilayer membranes is important for biological cells to exchange information and material with their environment. Large particles often get wrapped by membranes, a process which has been intensively…
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…
Designable media can control properties of nanocomposite materials by spatially organizing nanoparticles. Here we theoretically study particle organization by ultrathin polymer films of grafted chains (``brushes''). Polymer-soluble…
We present a mesoscale representation of near-contact interactions between colliding droplets which permits to reach up to the scale of full microfluidic devices, where such droplets are produced. The method is demonstrated for the case of…
Nanoparticles (NPs) in contact with biological fluid adsorb biomolecules into a corona. This corona comprises proteins that strongly bind to the NP (hard corona) and loosely bound proteins (soft corona) that dynamically exchange with the…
We study an elasticity model for compressed protein monolayers or particle rafts at a liquid interface. Based on the microscopic view of hard-core particles with soft shells, a bead-spring model is formulated and analyzed in terms of…
Polymeric particles are strong candidates for designing artificial materials capable of emulating the complex twisting-based functionality observed in biological systems. In this letter, we provide the first detailed investigation of the…
We apply extensive Molecular Dynamics simulations and analytical considerations in order to study the conformations and the effective interactions between weakly charged, flexible polyelectrolyte chains in salt-free conditions. We focus on…
The next generation of soft electronics will expand to the third dimension. This will require the integration of mechanically-compliant three-dimensional functional structures with stretchable materials. This study demonstrates…
The motility-induced phase separation exhibited by active particles with repulsive interactions is well known. We show that the interaction softness of active particles destabilizes the highly ordered dense phase, leading to the formation…
The study of the interactions of living adherent cells with mechanically stable (visco)elastic materials enables understanding and exploiting physiological phenomena mediated by cell-extracellular communication. However, insight on the…
The structure and mechanical properties of a simple two-dimensional model of a cohesive powder are investigated by molecular dynamics simulations. Micromechanical ingredients involve elasticity, friction, a short range attraction and,…
We examine the dynamics of silica particles grafted with high molecular weight polystyrene suspended in semidilute solutions of chemically similar linear polymer using x-ray photon correlation spectroscopy. The particle dynamics decouple…
The influence of shape fluctuations on deformable thermosensitive microgels in aqueous solution is investigated by dynamic light scattering (DLS) and depolarized dynamic light scattering (DDLS). The systems under study consist of a solid…
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…
Assemblies of purely repulsive and frictionless particles, such as emulsions or hard spheres, display very curious properties near their jamming transition, which occurs at the random close packing for mono-disperse spheres. Although such…
Hard-magnetic soft materials (HMSMs) are particulate composites that consist of a soft matrix embedded with particles of high remnant magnetic induction. Since the application of an external magnetic flux induces a body couple in HMSMs, the…