Related papers: Scaling between Structural Relaxation and Particle…
This study reports a general scenario for the out-of-equilibrium features of collapsing polymeric architectures. We use molecular dynamics simulations to characterize the coarsening kinetics, in bad solvent, for several macromolecular…
Colloidal gels are a prototypical example of a heterogeneous network solid whose complex properties are governed by thermally-activated dynamics. In this Letter we experimentally establish the connection between the intermittent dynamics of…
The formation of colloidal gels is strongly dependent on the volume fraction of the system and the strength of the interactions between the colloids. Here we explore very dilute solutions by the means of numerical simulations, and show…
Letting free polymers diffuse from solution into a crosslinked polymer gel is often a crucial processing step in the synthesis of multiphase polymer-based gels, e.g., core-shell microgels. Here we use coarse-grained molecular dynamics…
The dynamics of structural relaxation in a model polymer glass subject to spatially-homogeneous, time-periodic shear deformation is investigated using molecular dynamics simulations. We study a coarse-grained bead-spring model of short…
We report a molecular dynamics simulation study of a model gel whose interaction potential is obtained by modifying the three body Stillinger-Weber model potential for silicon. The modification reduces the average coordination number, and…
We exploit the controlled drying of millimeter-sized gel beads to investigate isotropic compression of colloidal fractal gels. Using a custom dynamic light scattering setup, we demonstrate that stresses imposed by drying on the bead surface…
We identify the pattern of microscopic dynamical relaxation for a two dimensional glass forming liquid. On short timescales, bursts of irreversible particle motion, called cage jumps, aggregate into clusters. On larger time scales, clusters…
We study the dynamics of a glassy model with infinite range interactions externally driven by an oscillatory force. We find a well-defined transition in the (Temperature-Amplitude-Frequency) phase diagram between (i) a `glassy' state…
We prove the emergence of spatially correlated dynamics in slowly compacting dense granular media by analyzing analytically and numerically multi-point correlation functions in a simple particle model characterized by slow non-equilibrium…
Relaxation dynamics in reversible catalytic reaction networks is studied, revealing two salient behaviors that are reminiscent of glassy behavior: slow relaxation with log(time) dependence of the correlation function, and emergence of a few…
Using fast confocal microscopy we image the three-dimensional dynamics of particles in a yielded hard-sphere colloidal glass under steady shear. The structural relaxation, observed in regions with uniform shear, is nearly isotropic but is…
We use the ``isoconfigurational ensemble'' [Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 93}, 135701 (2004)] to analyze both dynamical and structural properties in simulations of a glass forming molecular liquid. We show that spatially correlated clusters of low…
We investigate the heterogeneous dynamics in a model, where chemical gelation and glass transition interplay, focusing on the dynamical susceptibility. Two independent mechanisms give raise to the correlations, which are manifested in the…
We report results of molecular-dynamics simulations of a model polymer melt consisting of short non-entangled chains in the supercooled state above the critical temperature of mode-coupling theory (MCT). To analyse the dynamics of the…
Hydrogels have had a profound impact in the fields of tissue engineering, drug delivery, and materials science as a whole. Due to the network architecture of these materials, imbibement with water often results in uniform swelling and…
We discuss a novel approach, the point-to-set correlation functions, that allows to determine relevant static and dynamic length scales in glass-forming liquids. We find that static length scales increase monotonically when the temperature…
Structural relaxation in hard-sphere colloidal glasses has been studied using confocal microscopy. The motion of individual particles is followed over long time scales to detect the rearranging regions in the system. We have used normal…
Low-density networks of molecules or colloids are formed at low temperatures when the interparticle interactions are valence limited. Prototypical examples are networks of patchy particles, where the limited valence results from highly…
During directional solidification of the solvent in a colloidal suspension, the colloidal particles segregate from the growing solid, forming high-particle-density regions with structure on a hierarchy of length scales ranging from that of…