Related papers: Sterically stabilized lock and key colloids: A sel…
The interactions between spherical colloids covered with end-grafted polymers (brushes) immersed in a polymer melt are studied theoretically. We show that attractive enthalpic interactions between the two polymer species, characterized by a…
The Landau-de Gennes free energy is used to study theoretically the effective interaction of a spherical "key" and an anisotropic "lock" colloidal particles. We assume identical anchoring properties of the surfaces of the key and of the…
The dynamics of particles interacting by key-lock binding of attached biomolecules are studied theoretically. Experimental realizations of such systems include colloids grafted with complementary single-stranded DNA (ssDNA), and particles…
Herein, we describe new methods to produce colloidal particle chains of three stiffness regimes that can be observed on a single-particle level, that is, on the level of the monomers that make up the chain; the chains can even be observed…
Active colloidal particles typically exhibit a pronounced affinity for accumulating and being captured at boundaries. Here, we engineer long-range repulsive interactions between colloids that self-propel under an electric field and…
The dynamical response of a tethered semiflexible polymer with self-attractive interactions and subjected to an external force field is numerically investigated by varying stiffness and self-interaction strength. The chain is confined in…
The structural and dynamical properties of ultra-soft colloids - star polymers - exposed to a uniform external force field are analyzed applying the multiparticle collision dynamics approach, a hybrid coarse-grain mesoscale simulation…
We report experimental and simulation studies of the structure of a monolayer of indented ("lock and key") colloids, on a planar surface. On adding a non-absorbing polymer with prescribed radius and volume fraction, depletion interactions…
We consider the interaction of two-dimensional colloids, in nematic liquid crystals, with walls or geometrical boundaries. The interactions between colloidal disks and flat walls, with homeotropic boundary conditions, are always repulsive.…
Theoretical studies of self-assembly processes and condensed phases in colloidal systems are often based on effective inter-particle potentials. Here we show that developing an effective potential for particles interacting with a limited…
Semiflexible polymers are widely used as a paradigm for understanding structural phases in biomolecules including folding of proteins. Here, we compare bead-spring and bead-stick variants of coarse-grained semiflexible polymer models that…
Using molecular dynamics simulations of a tangent-soft-sphere bead-spring polymer model, we examine the degree to which semiflexible polymer melts solidify at isostaticity. Flexible and stiff chains crystallize when they are isostatic as…
Semiflexible polymer models are widely used as a paradigm to understand structural phases in biomolecules including folding of proteins. Since stable knots are not so common in real proteins, the existence of stable knots in semiflexible…
The paper presents a short overview of the theoretical, numerical and experimental works on the critical behavior of a dilute polymer solution of long-flexible polymer chains confined in semi-infinite space restricted by a surface or in a…
In this article we examine the dynamics of a colloidal particle driven by a modulated force over a sinusoidal optical potential energy landscape. Coupling between the competing frequencies of the modulated drive and that of particle motion…
The effective interaction between a sphere with an open cavity (lock) and a spherical macroparticle (key), both immersed in a hard sphere fluid, is studied by means of Monte Carlo simulations. As a result, a 2d map of the key-lock effective…
Self-Consistent Field Theory is applied to a film of cylindrical-forming block copolymer subject to a surface field which tends to align the cylinders parallel to electrical plates, and to an external electric field tending to align them…
We study the depletion-induced self-assembly of indented colloids. Using state-of-the-art Monte Carlo simulation techniques that treat the depletant particles explicitly, we demonstrate that colloids assemble by a lock-and-key mechanism,…
We present a numerical algorithm to evaluate the self-consistent field theory for melts composed of block copolymers with multiply-branched architecture. We present results for the case of branched copolymers with doubly-functional groups…
Liquid crystalline media mediate interactions between suspended particles and confining geometries, which not only has potential to guide patterning and bottom-up colloidal assembly, but can also control colloidal migration in microfluidic…