Related papers: Phase Transitions in Soft Matter Induced by Select…
When a liquid mixture is subjected to external electric fields, ionic screening leads to field gradients. We point out that if the mixture is initially in the homogeneous phase, this screening can bring about a robust phase-separation…
We show that hydrophilic ions present in a confined, near-critical aqueous mixture can lead to an attraction between like charge surfaces with opposing preferential adsorption of the two species of the mixture, even though the corresponding…
We develop a thermodynamic description of particles held at a fixed surface potential. This system is of particular interest in view of the continuing controversy over the possibility of a fluid-fluid phase separation in aqueous colloidal…
We propose a mean-field analytical model to account for the observed asymmetry in the ability to form long-range attraction by the negatively charged colloidal particles and not their equivalently charged positive counterpart. We conjecture…
Surface phase transitions in surfactant adsorption layers are known to affect the dynamic properties of foams and to induce surface nucleation in freezing emulsion drops. Recently, these transitions were found to play a role in several…
Electrostatics in the solution phase is governed by free electrical charges such as ions, as well as by bound charges that arise when a polarizable medium responds to an applied field. In a local medium, described by a constant dielectric…
From experimental studies it is well-known that colloidal particles suspended in a near-critical binary solvent exhibit interesting aggregation phenomena, often associated with colloidal phase transitions, and assumed to be driven by…
We investigate the modification of gas phase ion polarizabilities upon solvation in polar solvents and ionic liquids. To this aim, we develop a classical electrostatic theory of charged liquids composed of solvent molecules modeled as…
Motility-induced phase separation (MIPS) arises generically in fluids of self-propelled particles when interactions lead to a kinetic slowdown at high densities. Starting from a continuum description of scalar active matter, akin to a…
Solvent plays an important role in the relative motion of nanoscopic bodies, and the study of such phenomena can help elucidate the mechanism of hydrophobic assembly, as well as the influence of solvent-mediated effects on in vivo motion in…
We study a diffuse interface model describing the complex rheology and the interfacial dynamics during phase separation in a polar liquid-crystalline emulsion. More precisely, the physical systems comprises a two-phase mixture consisting in…
The fluctuations of ions in polar solvents remain poorly understood theoretically due to the complex coupling between ionic motion and solvent polarization. Indeed, while all-atom resolution can be achieved in numerical simulations,…
We construct a mean-field formulation of the thermodynamics of ion solvation in immiscible polar binary mixtures. Assuming an equilibrium planar interface separating two semi-infinite regions of different constant dielectric medium, we…
We study ion pair dissociation in water at ambient conditions using a combination of classical and ab initio approaches. The goal of this study is to disentangle the sources of discrepancy observed in computed potentials of mean force. In…
We theoretically investigate electrostatic properties between two charged surfaces with a grafted polyelectrolyte layer in an aqueous electrolyte solution by using the Poisson-Boltzmann approach accounting for ion partitioning. In order to…
Soft clay-like Li-superionic conductors have been recently synthesized by mixing rigid-salts. Through computational and experimental analysis, we clarify how a soft clay-like material can be created from a mixture of rigid-salts. Using…
Monte Carlo simulations in the grand canonical ensemble were used to obtain critical parameters and conditions leading to microphase separation for block copolymers with solvophilic and solvophobic segments. Solvent selectivity was…
We show that systematic particle rotations in a fluid composed of disk-shaped spinners can spontaneously lead to phase separation. The phenomenon arises out of a homogeneous and hydrostatic stationary state, due to a pressure feedback…
The motility-induced phase separation exhibited by active particles with repulsive interactions is well known. We show that the interaction softness of active particles destabilizes the highly ordered dense phase, leading to the formation…
There is increasing evidence that entropy can induce microphase separation in binary fluid mixtures interacting through hard particle potentials. One such phase consists of alternating two dimensional liquid-like layers of rods and spheres.…