Related papers: Orientational order and glassy states in networks …
Due to the lack of long-range order, it remains challenging to characterize the structure of disordered solids and understand the nature of the glass transition. Here we propose a new structural order parameter by taking into account…
As a first step to understanding the role of molecular or chemical polydispersity in self-assembly, we put forward a coarse-grained model that describes the spontaneous formation of quasi-linear polymers in solutions containing two…
Molecular packing, crystallinity, and texture of semiconducting polymers are often critical to performance. Although frame-works exist to quantify the ordering, interpretations are often just qualitative, resulting in imprecise and liberal…
In this thesis the formation and properties of a polymer gel on and at a surface are investigated. The gel under investigation is defined as a three-dimensional network of "phantom" macromolecules that form permanent links with one another…
A spontaneous buckling transition in thin layers of monodomain nematic liquid crystalline gel was observed by polarized light microscopy. The coupling between the orientational ordering of liquid crystalline solvent and the translational…
We study smectic-liquid-crystal order in a cell with a heterogeneous substrate imposing surface random positional and orientational pinnings. Proposing a minimal random elastic model, we demonstrate that, for a thick cell, the smectic state…
We investigate the dynamics of a fluid of dipolar hard spheres in its liquid and glassy phase, with emphasis on the microscopic time or frequency regime. This system shows rather different glass transition scenarios related to its rich…
We construct a three-dimensional lattice model for biological gels in which straight lines of bonds correspond to filamentous semi-flexible polymers and lattice sites, which are exactly four-fold coordinated, to crosslinks. With only…
Brownian motion and viscoelasticity of semiflexible polymers is a subject that has been studied for many years. Still, rigorous analysis has been hindered due to the difficulty in handling the constraint that polymer chains cannot be…
We characterize the order-disorder transition in a model lipid bilayer using molecular dynamics simulations. We find that the ordered phase is hexatic. In particular, in-plane structures possess a finite concentration of 5-7 disclination…
Semiflexible polymers in concentrated lyotropic solution are studied within a bead-spring model by molecular dynamics simulations, focusing on the emergence of a smectic A phase and its properties. We systematically vary the density of the…
In vivo and in vitro systems of cells and extra-cellular matrix (ECM) systems are well known to form ordered patterns of orientationally aligned fibers. Here, we interpret them as active analogs of the (disordered) isotropic to the…
Properties of disordered nematic elastomers and gels are theoretically investigated with emphasis on the roles of non-local elastic interactions and crosslinking conditions. Networks originally crosslinked in the isotropic phase lose their…
We consider the gelation of particles which are permanently connected by random crosslinks, drawn from an ensemble of finite-dimensional continuum percolation. To average over the randomness, we apply the replica trick, and interpret the…
We report on the results of molecular dynamics simulation (MD) studies of the classical two-dimensional electron crystal in the presence disorder. Our study is motivated by recent experiments on this system in modulation doped semiconductor…
Liquid crystal elastomers present a rich combination of effects associated with orientational symmetry breaking and the underlying rubber elasticity. In this work we focus on the effect of the network on the nematic--smectic-{\sl A}…
We study a disordered network of bistable bonds subjected to periodic strain. The model is inspired by experiments on crumpled sheets and it features behaviors associated with glasses, including a complex energy landscape, memories, and…
We examine the ordering behavior of hard plate-like particle in a very narrow slit-like pore using the Parsons-Lee density functional theory and the restricted orientation approximation. We observe that the plates are orientationally…
The interplay of nematic order and phase separation in solutions of semiflexible polymers in solvents of variable quality is investigated by density functional theory (DFT) and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. We studied coarse-grained…
We present Monte Carlo simulations of a dense polymer melt which shows glass-transition-like slowing-down upon cooling, as well as a build up of nematic order. At small wave vectors q this model system shows excess scattering similar to…