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Controlling the spatial distribution of liquid droplets on surfaces via surface energy patterning can be used to control material delivery to specified regions via selective liquid/solid wetting. While studies of the equilibrium shape of…
The influence of the external pressure and surface energy on the wetting transition at nanotextured interfaces is studied using molecular dynamics and continuum simulations. The surface roughness of the composite interface is introduced via…
We simulate entangled linear polymers in free-standing thin film geometries where the confining dimension is on the same scale or smaller than the bulk chain dimensions. We compare both film-averaged and layer-resolved, spatially…
At the cutting edge of materials science, matter is designed to self-organize into structures that perform a wide range of functions. The past two decades have witnessed major innovations in the versatility of building blocks, ranging from…
The phase behavior of symmetric diblock copolymers under three-dimensional (3D) soft confinement is investigated using the self-consistent field theory. The soft confinement is realized in binary blends composed AB diblock copolymers and C…
Enhancing light-matter coupling in two-dimensional (2D) semiconductors such as transition metal dichalcogenide monolayers remains a central challenge in nanophotonics due to their atomic thickness, which limits their interaction volume with…
Experimental investigations of hydrophobic/water interfaces often return controversial results, possibly due to the unknown role of gas accumulation at the interfaces. Here, during advanced atomic force microscopy of the initial evolution…
In layered materials, a common mode of deformation involves buckling of the layers under tensile deformation in the direction perpendicular to the layers. The instability mechanism, which operates in elastic materials from geological to…
Isoporous membranes made from diblock copolymers have numerous applications, including water treatment and protein separation, and are successfully produced at a laboratory scale under controlled conditions. However, achieving optimal…
We study ground states of a hybrid system consisting of a polymer and an attractive nanowire by means of computer simulations. Depending on structural and energetic properties of the substrate, we find different adsorbed polymer…
We present some results of Monte Carlo simulations for the deposition of particles of different sizes on a two-dimensional substrate. The particles are linear, height one, and can be deposited randomly only in the two, $x$ and $y$…
Surface-induced liquid crystalline phase transitions evoke fundamental interest and can provide deeper insight into the nature of low-dimensional phase transitions. Board-like conjugated polymers are particularly interesting because they…
A dynamical model is proposed to describe the coupled decomposition and profile evolution of a free surface film of a binary mixture. An example is a thin film of a polymer blend on a solid substrate undergoing simultaneous phase separation…
We investigate the phase behavior of symmetric AB diblock copolymers confined into a thin film. The film boundaries are parallel, impenetrable and attract the A component of the diblock copolymer. Using a self-consistent field technique…
Ordering nanoparticles into a desired super-structure is often crucial for their technological applications. We use molecular dynamics simulations to study the assembly of nanoparticles in a polymer brush randomly grafted to a planar…
A self-interacting polymer can undergo an orientational ordering transition, depending on the magnitude of the nematic interaction. The effect of embedding such a polymer into a flexible surface on this transition is studied on the…
We analyze a (1+1)-dimension directed random walk model of a polymer dipped in a medium constituted by two immiscible solvents separated by a flat interface. The polymer chain is heterogeneous in the sense that a single monomer may…
We present experiments to study the relaxation of a nano-scale cylindrical perturbation at one of the two interfaces of a thin viscous free-standing polymeric film. Driven by capillarity, the film flows and evolves towards equilibrium by…
We investigate the binding transition of two flexible polymers grafted to a steric surface with closeby end points. While free polymers show a discontinuous transition, grafting to a steric flat surface leads to a continuous binding…
Assembled monolayers of colloidal particles are crucial for various applications, including opto-electronics, surface engineering, as well as light harvesting, and catalysis. A common approach for self-assembly is the drying of a colloidal…