Related papers: Modifying Fragility and Collective Motion in Polym…
In this paper we propose a short range generalization of the $p$-spin interaction spin-glass model. The model is well suited to test the idea that an entropy collapse is at the bottom-line of the dynamical singularity encountered in…
Associative polymers are a class of polymers containing attractive stickers that can reversibly bind to each other. Their fully-bonded state gives rise, in dilute conditions, to a fluid phase of so-called single-chain nanoparticles (SCNPs).…
Molecular dynamics simulations are used to study contact between a rigid, nonadhesive, spherical tip with radius of order 30nm and a flat elastic substrate covered with a fluid monolayer of adsorbed chain molecules. Previous studies of bare…
We study the dependence of the fracture surface energy on the pulling velocity for nano-porous polypropylene (PP) sheets to find two components: the static and dynamic ones. We show that these terms can be interpreted respectively as…
Nonequilibrium molecular dynamics simulations are used to study the deformation behavior of disperse polymer melts by tracking test chains of length N = Mw, the weight average molecular weight, in melts of varying dispersity. At high strain…
The shapes of cooperatively rearranging regions in glassy liquids change from being compact at low temperatures to fractal or ``stringy'' as the dynamical crossover temperature from activated to collisional transport is approached from…
We have studied the low speed fracture regime for different glassy materials with variable but controlled length scales of heterogeneity in a carefully mastered surrounding atmosphere. By using optical and atomic force microscopy (AFM)…
Using non-contact scanning probe microscopy (SPM) techniques, dielectric properties were studied on 50 nanometer length scales in poly-vinyl-acetate (PVAc) films in the vicinity of the glass transition. Low frequency (1/f) noise observed in…
This work proposes an investigation of the fracturing behavior of polymer nanocomposites. Towards this end, the study leverages the analysis of a large bulk of fracture tests from the literature with the goal of critically investigating the…
The mechanical properties of amorphous solids like metallic glasses can be dramatically changed by adding small concentrations (as low as 0.1\%) of foreign elements. The glass-forming-ability, the ductility, the yield stress and the elastic…
Physically assembled gels have promising applications in many fields because of their tunable mechanical properties. Here, we report the mechanical properties as a function of polymer volume fraction ($\phi$) for a physical gel system…
Swimming droplets are a class of active particles whose motility changes as a function of time due to shrinkage and self-avoidance of their trail. Here we combine experiments and theory to show that our non-Markovian droplet (NMD) model,…
Fundamental understanding of the effect of microscopic parameters on the dynamics of probe particles in different complex environments has wide implications. Examples include diffusion of proteins in the biological hydrogels, porous media,…
Under many conditions, biomolecules and nanoparticles associate by means of attractive bonds, due to hydrophobic attraction. Extracting the microscopic association or dissociation rates from experimental data is complicated by the…
When a liquid is cooled below its melting temperature it usually crystallizes. However, if the quenching rate is fast enough, it is possible that the system remains in a disordered state, progressively losing its fluidity upon further…
We study geometric and energetic factors that partake in modifying properties of polymeric melts via inserting well-dispersed nanoscopic particles (NP). Model systems are polybutadiene melts including 10-150 atom atomic clusters (0.1-1.5%…
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 have used density functional perturbation theory to investigate the stiffness of interatomic bonds in small clusters of Si, Sn and Pb. As the number of atoms in a cluster is decreased, there is a marked shortening and stiffening of…
We study the effect of physical confinement on the capillary infiltration of polymers into cylindrical nanopores using molecular dynamics simulations. In particular, we probe whether the critical contact angle above which capillary rise…
Dynamics of a polymer chain in solution gets significantly affected by the temperature and the frictional forces arising due to solvent viscosity. Here, using an explicit solvent framework for polymer simulation with the liberty to tune the…