Related papers: Block Copolymer Films with Free Interfaces: Orderi…
We consider two different problems involving the localization of a single polymer chain: (i) a periodic $AB$ copolymer at a selective fluid-fluid interface, with the upper (resp. lower) fluid attracting $A$ (resp. $B$) monomers (ii) a…
Controlling laser-induced pattern formation remains a long-standing challenge. A key advance was recognising the pivotal role of intrinsic feedback mechanisms in self-organisation, which enabled self-similar patterns with long-range order…
Block copolymer melts offer a unique template to control the position and alignment of nanoparticles due to their ability to self-assemble into periodic ordered structures. Active Brownian particles are shown to co-assemble with block…
Templated copolymerization, in which information stored in the sequence of a heteropolymer template is copied into another polymer product, is the mechanism behind all known methods of genetic information transfer. A key aspect of templated…
Over the past two decades polymer nanocomposites have received tremendous interest from industry and academia due to their advanced properties comparative to polymer blends. Many computational studies have revealed that the macroscopic…
Nanoscale and microscale confinement of biopolymers naturally occurs in cells and has been recently achieved in artificial structures designed for nanotechnological applications. Here, we present an extensive theoretical investigation of…
We study AB$_n$ miktoarm star block copolymers in the strong segregation limit, focussing on the role that the AB interface plays in determining the phase behavior. We develop an extension of the kinked-path approach which allows us to…
We study both experimentally and theoretically the self-assembly of binary block copolymers in dilute solution, where self-assembly is triggered by changing the solvent from the common good solvent THF to the selective solvent water, and…
Directed assembly of block polymers is rapidly becoming a viable strategy for lithographic patterning of nanoscopic features. One of the key attributes of directed assembly is that an underlying chemical or topographic substrate pattern…
Freestanding thin films, a class of low-dimensional materials capable of maintaining structural integrity without substrates, have emerged as a forefront research focus. Their unique advantages-circumventing substrate clamping, liberating…
Systematic exploration of amorphous ABC heterostructures revealed that nanoscale morphological modifications markedly improved their artificial bulk second-order susceptibility. These amorphous birefringent heterostructures were fabricated…
We study the three-dimensional structure formation when atoms are deposited onto a substrate with a decagonal quasicrystalline order. Molecular-dynamicscalculations show that the adsorbate layer consists of ordered nano-scale domains with…
The physical and chemical properties of metal nanoparticles differ significantly from those of free metal atoms as well as from the properties of bulk metals, and therefore, they may be viewed as a transition regime between the two physical…
We investigate the role played by the bidispersity of polymer chains on the local structure and the potential of mean force (PMF) between silica nanoparticles (NPs) in a polystyrene melt. We use the hybrid particle-field molecular dynamics…
Capillarity-driven self-assembly at fluidic interfaces offers a scalable route to large, reconfigurable materials. Microscale particles with high horizontal-to-vertical aspect ratios become attractive building blocks for shape-directed…
The formation of smart emulsions or foams whose stability can be controlled on-demand by switching external parameters is of great interest for basic research and applications. An emerging group of smart stabilizers are microgels, which are…
Confinement or geometric frustration is known to alter the structure of soft matter, including copolymeric melts, and can consequently be used to tune structure and properties. Here we investigate the self-assembly of ABC and ABB 3-miktoarm…
Solid substrates can be endued with self-organized regular stripe patterns of nanoscopic lengthscale by Langmuir-Blodgett transfer of organic monolayers. Here we consider the effect of periodically prepatterned substrates on this process of…
This paper investigates the influence of interfaces on the performance of finite-sized mechanical metamaterial structures for vibration damping applications. The metamaterial structures are designed in a sandwich configuration in which two…
Here we report on the translocation of folded polymers through nano-pores using molecular dynamic simulations. Two cases are studied; one in which a folded molecule unfolds upon passage and one in which the folding remains intact as the…