Related papers: Mesophase formation in two-component cylindrical b…
We present theory and simulation of simultaneous chemical demixing and phase ordering in a polymer-liquid crystal mixture in conditions where isotropic-isotropic phase separation is metastable with respect to isotropic-nematic phase…
We devise a method for designing materials that will have some desired structural characteristics. We apply it to multiblock copolymers that have two different types of monomers, A and B. We show how to determine what sequence of A's and…
The rapid collapse of a polymer, due to external forces or changes in solvent, yields a long-lived `crumpled globule.' The conjectured fractal structure shaped by hierarchical collapse dynamics has proved difficult to establish, even with…
As a result of nonequilibrium forces, purely repulsive self-propelled particles undergo macrophase separation between a dense and a dilute phase. We present a thorough study of the ordering kinetics of such motility-induced phase separation…
Phase separation in the Hubbard model is investigated with the dynamical cluster approximation. We find that it is present in the paramagnetic solution for values of filling smaller than one and at finite temperature when a positive…
We discuss the relation between the emergence of new phases with broken symmetry within the framework of simple models of biopolymers. We start with a classic model for a chain molecule of spherical beads tethered together, with the steric…
Phase separation within polymer networks plays a central role in shaping the structure and mechanics of both synthetic materials and living cells, including the formation of biomolecular condensates within cytoskeletal networks. Previous…
Using self-consistent field and density-functional theories, we first investigate colloidal self-assembling of colloid/polymer films confined between two soft surfaces grafted by polymers. With the increase of colloidal concentrations, the…
The cellular cytoplasm is organized into compartments. Phase separation is a simple manner to create membrane-less compartments in order to confine and localize particles like proteins. In many cases these particles are bound to fluctuating…
We report molecular dynamics simulations of the segregation of two overlapping chains in cylindrical confinement. We find that the entropic repulsion between the chains can be sufficiently strong to cause segregation on a time scale that is…
Multiblock copolymer chains in implicit nonselective solvents are studied by Monte Carlo method which employs a parallel tempering algorithm. Chains consisting of 120 $A$ and 120 $B$ monomers, arranged in three distinct microarchitectures:…
Mixtures of several macromolecular species can lead to the formation of higher-order structures that often display non-ideal mixing behavior. In this work, we propose a minimal model of a quaternary system which considers the formation of a…
The non-equilibrium structural and dynamical properties of flexible polymers confined in a square microchannel and exposed to a Poiseuille flow are investigated by mesoscale simulations. The chain length and the flow strength are…
While stretching of most polymer chains leads to rather featureless force-extension diagrams, some, notably DNA, exhibit non-trivial behavior with a distinct plateau region. Here we propose a unified theory that connects force-extension…
The phase behaviour of binary blends composed of A$_1$B$_1$ and A$_2$B$_2$ diblock copolymers is systematically studied using the polymeric self-consistent field theory, focusing on the formation and relative stability of various spherical…
We have recently investigated the phase behaviour of model colloidal dumbbells constituted by two identical tangent hard spheres, with the first one being surrounded by an attractive square-well interaction (Janus dumbbells, Muna\`o G et al…
We inquire about the possible coexistence of macroscopic and microstructured phases in random Q-block copolymers built of incompatible monomer types A and B with equal average concentrations. In our microscopic model, one block comprises M…
We present a theoretical model for predicting the phase behavior of polymer solutions in which phase separation competes with oligomerization. Specifically, we consider scenarios in which the assembly of polymer chains into stoichiometric…
The organization of nano-particles inside grafted polymer layers is governed by the interplay of polymer-induced entropic interactions and the action of externally applied fields. Earlier work had shown that strong external forces can drive…
Monte Carlo simulations are used to study the behavior of two polymers under confinement in a cylindrical tube. Each polymer is modeled as a chain of hard spheres. We measure the free energy of the system, F, as a function of the distance…