Related papers: Electrostatic cluster formation in lipid monolayer…
We investigate the phenomenon of multilayer formation via layer-by-layer deposition of alternating charge polyelectrolytes. Using mean-field theory, we find that a strong short-range attraction between the two types of polymer chains is…
Using a minimal model based on the continuum theory of a 2D hard-core/square-shoulder ensemble, we reinterpret the main features of cluster mesophases formed by colloids with soft concave repulsive interactions. We rederive the lattice…
A mixture of hard-sphere particles and model emulsion droplets is studied with a Brownian dynamics simulation. We find that the addition of nonwetting emulsion droplets to a suspension of pure hard spheres can lead to both gas-liquid and…
Fluids with competing short-range attractions and long-range repulsions mimic dispersions of charge-stabilized colloids that can display equilibrium structures with intermediate range order (IRO), including particle clusters. Using…
Cationic lipid membranes are known to form compact complexes with DNA and to be effective as gene delivery agents both in vitro and in vivo. Here we employ molecular dynamics simulations for a detailed atomistic study of lipid bilayers…
DNA is now firmly established as a versatile and robust platform for achieving synthetic nanostructures. While the folding of single molecules into complex structures is routinely achieved through engineering basepair sequences, much less…
The progress of realizing colloidal structures mimicking natural forms of organization in condensed matter is inherently limited by the availability of suitable colloidal building blocks. To enable new forms of crystalline and…
We report on atomistic simulations of DPPC lipid monolayers using the CHARMM36 lipid force field and four-point OPC water model. The entire two-phase region where domains of the `liquid-condensed' (LC) phase coexist with domains of the…
We develop a new quantitative molecular theory of liquid-phase dipolar polymer gels. We model monomer units of the polymer network as a couple of charged sites separated by a fluctuating distance. For the first time, within the random phase…
We present real-time observations by confocal microscopy of the dynamic behavior of multilamellar vesicles (MLVs), composed of charged synthetic lipids, when put in contact with oppositely charged polyelectrolyte (PE) molecules. We find…
Weakly attractive interactions between the tips of rod-like colloidal particles affect their liquid-crystal phase behaviour due to a subtle interplay between enthalpy and entropy. Here, we employ molecular dynamics simulations on…
Boundary lubrication is associated with two sliding molecularly thin lubricated film-coated surfaces, where the energy dissipation occurs at the slip-plane between lubricated films. The hydration lubrication paradigm, which accounts for…
We describe a simple coarse-grained model which is suited to study lipid layers and their phase transitions. Lipids are modeled by short semiflexible chains of beads with a solvophilic head and a solvophobic tail component. They are forced…
Exact thermal studies of small (4-site, 5-site and 8-site) Hubbard clusters with local electron repulsion yield intriguing insight into phase separation, charge-spin separation, pseudogaps, condensation, in particular, pairing fluctuations…
We formulate a simple effective model to describe molecular interactions in a lipid monolayer. The model represents lipid molecules in terms of two-dimensional anisotropic particles on the plane of the monolayer. These particles interact…
Within a general framework we study the effective, deformation-induced interaction between two colloids trapped at a fluid interface. As an application, we consider the interface deformation owing to the electrostatic field of charged…
A nanocomposite film containing highly polarizable inclusions in a fluid background is explored when an external electric field is applied perpendicular to the planar film. For small electric fields, the induced dipole moments of the…
We study the phase ordering colloids suspended in a thermotropic nematic liquid crystal below the clearing point Tni and the resulting aggregated structure. Small (150nm) PMMA particles are dispersed in a classical liquid crystal matrix,…
Systems containing active components are intrinsically out of equilibrium, while binary mixtures reach their equilibrium configuration when complete phase separation is achieved. Active particles are found to stabilise non-equilibrium…
Non-aligning self-propelled particles with purely repulsive excluded volume interactions undergo athermal motility-induced phase separation into a dilute gas and a dense cluster phase. Here, we use enhanced sampling computational methods…