Related papers: Solvation Effects in Phase Transitions in Soft Mat…
We review our recent studies on selective solvation effects in phase separation in polar binary mixtures with a small amount of solutes. Such hydrophilic or hydrophobic particles are preferentially attracted to one of the solvent…
Antagonistic salts are composed of hydrophilic and hydrophobic ions. In a mixture solvent (water-oil) such ion pairs are preferentially attracted to water or oil, giving rise to a coupling between the charge density and the composition.…
Dynamic equations are presented for polar binary mixtures containing ions in the presence of the preferential solvation. In one-phase states, we calculate the dynamic structure factor of the composition accounting for the ion motions.…
We calculate the ion and composition distributions around colloid particles in an aqueous mixture, accounting for preferential adsorption, electrostatic interaction, selective solvation among ions and polar molecules, and…
Antagonistic salts are salts which consist of hydrophilic and hydrophobic ions. In a binary mixture of water and organic solvent, these ions preferentially dissolve into different phases. We investigate the effect of an antagonistic salt,…
We develop a lattice-based Monte Carlo simulation method for charged mixtures capable of treating dielectric heterogeneities. Using this method, we study oil-water mixtures containing an antagonistic salt, with hydrophilic cations and…
We examine phase separation in aqueous mixtures due to preferential solvation with a low-density solute (hydrophilic ions or hydrophobic particles). For hydrophilic ions, preferential solvation can stabilize water domains enriched with…
We examine an electric double layer containing an antagonistic salt in an aqueous mixture, where the cations are small and hydrophilic but the anions are large and hydrophobic. In this situation, a strong coupling arises between the charge…
Phase transition is observed between one-phase disordered phase and an ordered phase with multi-lamellar (onion) structures in an off-critical mixture of D$_2$O and 3-methylpyridine (3MP) containing a salt at 85mM. The salt consists of…
We examine phase separation in aqueous mixtures at fixed amounts of hydrophilic monovalent ions. When water is the minority component, preferential solvation can stabilize water domains enriched with ions. This ion-induced precipitation…
We report on salt-dependent interaction potentials of a single charged particle suspended in a binary liquid mixture above a charged wall. For symmetric boundary conditions (BC) we observe attractive particle-wall interaction forces which…
Efficient mixing of colloids, particles or molecules is a central issue in many processes. It results from the complex interplay between flow deformations and molecular diffusion, which is generally assumed to control the homogenization…
Solvation of ions is ubiquitous on our planet. Solvated ions have a profound effect on the behavior of ionic solutions, which is crucial in nature and technology. Experimentally, ions have been classified into "structure makers" or…
Ionic solids and melts are compounds in which the interactions are dominated by electrostatic effects. However, the polarization of the ions also plays an important role in many respects as has been clarified in recent years thanks to the…
We briefly review the effects of selective solvation of ions in aqueous mixtures, where the ion densities and the composition fluctuations are strongly coupled. We then examine the surface tension \gamma of a liquid-liquid interface in the…
We calculate the interaction potential between two colloids immersed in an aqueous mixture containing salt near or above the critical temperature. We find an attractive interaction far from the coexistence curve due to the combination of…
We present simulation results and an explanatory theory on how antagonistic salts affect the spinodal decomposition of binary fluid mixtures. We find that spinodal decomposition is arrested and complex structures form only when…
The experimentally observed swelling and collapse response of weakly charged polymers to the addition of specific salts displays quite convoluted behavior that is not easy to categorize. Here we use a minimalistic implicit solvent /…
Conformational transitions of flexible molecules, especially those driven by hydrophobic effects, tend to be hindered by desolvation barriers. For such transitions, it is thus important to characterize and understand the interplay between…
Microphase separation in polymeric systems provides a bottom-up strategy to fabricate nanostructures. Polymers that are reported to undergo microphase separation usually include block copolymers or polyelectrolytes. Neutral homopolymers,…