Related papers: Phase Transitions in Soft Matter Induced by Select…
The performance of gold nanoparticles (NPs) in applications depends critically on the structure of the NP-solvent interface, at which the electrostatic surface polarization is one of the key characteristics that affects hydration, ionic…
We consider a model fluid with long-ranged, dispersion interparticle potentials confined between competing parallel walls. One wall is solvophilic and would be completely wet at bulk liquid-gas coexistence while the other is solvophobic and…
Pair potentials that are bounded at the origin provide an accurate description of the effective interaction for many systems of dissolved soft macromolecules (e.g., flexible dendrimers). Using numerical free-energy calculations, we…
The interaction between charged objects in solution is generally expected to recapitulate two central principles of electromagnetics: (i) like-charged objects repel, and (ii) they do so regardless of the sign of their electrical charge.…
This paper extends our earlier studies of free energy functions of density and crystalline order parameters for models of supercooled water, which allows us to examine the possibility of two distinct metastable liquid phases [J. Chem. Phys.…
We examine statics and dynamics of phase-separated states of dilute binary mixtures using density functional theory. In our systems, the difference in the salvation chemical potential $\Delta\mu_s$ between liquid and gas is considerably…
Insoluble surfactant monolayers at the air/water interface undergo a phase transition from a high-temperature homogeneous state to a low-temperature demixed state, where dilute and dense phases coexist. Alternatively, the transition from a…
The standard Maxwell formulation of the problem of polarized dielectrics suffers from a number of difficulties, both conceptual and practical. These difficulties are particularly significant in the case of liquid interfaces, where the…
We present a mechanism for the stabilization of colloids in liquid mixtures without use of surfactants or polymers. When a suitable salt is added to a solvent mixture, the coupling of the colloid's surface chemistry and the preferential…
In this article, we demonstrate a method for inducing reversible crystal-to-crystal transitions in binary mixtures of soft colloidal particles. Through a controlled decrease of salinity and increasingly dominating electrostatic…
We introduce a field-theoretic electrolyte model composed of structured solvent molecules and salt ions coupled by electrostatic and hard-core interactions. Within this explicit solvent theory, we characterize the salt-driven dielectric…
Silver iodide is one of the most potent inorganic ice nucleating particles known, a feature generally attributed to the excellent lattice match between its basal Ag-(0001) and I-(000-1) surfaces, and ice. This crystal termination, however,…
Phase separation of two phase separating solutes in a common solvent can result in mesoscale (micron-sized) droplets with complex topologies of the domains of each solute within each droplet. Such topologies have been observed in-vitro in…
Fluid phase behavior of charge-stabilized colloidal suspensions is explored by applying a new variant of the Gibbs ensemble Monte Carlo simulation method to a coarse-grained one-component model with implicit microions and solvent. The…
We show that phase separation can occur in a one-component liquid outside its coexistence curve (CX) with addition of a small amount of a solute. The solute concentration at the transition decreases with increasing the difference of the…
The preferential formation of one solid over the other, as it precipitates out from the melt at specific temperatures, is often explained by invoking a competition between thermodynamic and kinetic control. A quantitative theory, however,…
Nanoscopic pores are used in various systems to attract nanoparticles. In general the behaviour is a result of two types of interactions: the material specific affinity and the solvent-mediated influence also called the depletion force. The…
We calculate analytically the forces between two solvophobic solutes, considering a model system. We show that the effective interaction forces between two solvophobic solutes, mediated by the solvent, is attractive for short ranges, which…
We show that the tendency towards microphase separation in microemulsions leads to the formation of a glassy state after sufficiently strong correlations between polar and hydrophobic regions have been established. Glassiness is predicted…
Demixing of binary liquids is a ubiquitous transition, which is explained using a well-established thermodynamic formalism that requires equality of intensive thermodynamics parameters across the phase boundaries. Demixing transitions also…