Related papers: Morphological Control of Grafted Polymer Films by …
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…
Both the dispersion state of nanoparticles (NPs) within polymer nanocomposites (PNCs) and the dynamical state of the polymer altered by the presence of the NP/polymer interfaces have a strong impact on the macroscopic properties of PNCs. In…
We explore the effect of an attractive interaction between parallel-aligned polymers, which are perpendicularly grafted on a substrate. Such an attractive interaction could be due to, e.g., reversible cross-links. The competition between…
The presence of defects such as vacancies in solids has prominent effects on their mechanical properties. It not only modifies the stiffness and strength of materials, but also changes their morphologies. The latter effect is extremely…
Periodic assemblies of nanoparticles are central to surface patterning, with applications in biosensing, energy conversion, and nanofabrication. Evaporation of colloidal droplets on substrates provides a simple yet effective route to…
The anchoring of nematic liquid crystals on surfaces with grafted liquid crystalline chain molecules is studied by computer simulations and within a mean field approach. The computer simulations show that a swollen layer of collectively…
We present Monte Carlo simulations of colloidal particles pulled into grafted polymer layers by external fields. The insertion free energy of a single colloid into the polymer layer is qualitatively different for surfaces with an ordered…
Flexoelectricity, polarization induced by strain gradients, is especially pronounced in two-dimensional (2D) materials due to their mechanical flexibility and sensitivity to mechanical deformation. In nanostructures with sub-nm curvature,…
MOF/polymer composites have been widely investigated in the past decade for gas separation applications. However, the impact of MOF nanoparticle morphology and size in gas separation have not yet been systematically studied by computer…
Graphene, the 2D form of carbon, has excellent mechanical, electrical and thermal properties and a variety of potential applications including NEMS, protective coatings, transparent electrodes in display devices and biological applications.…
The lifting, peeling and exfoliation of physisorbed ribbons (or flakes) of 2D material such as graphene off a solid surface are common and important manoeuvres in nanoscience. The feature that makes this case peculiar is the structural…
Morphology of polymer electrolytes membranes (PEM), e.g., Nafion, inside PEM fuel cell catalyst layers has significant impact on the electrochemical activity and transport phenomena that determine cell performance. In those regions, Nafion…
Ligand coated nanoparticles are complex objects consisting of a metallic or semiconductor core with organic ligands grafted on their surface. These organic ligands provide stability to a nanoparticle suspension. In solutions, the effective…
Brush-like structures emerge from stretching of long polymer chains, densely grafted on to the surface of an impermeable substrate. They arise due to the competition between conformational entropic elasticity of polymer chains and excluded…
The surface curvature of membranes, interfaces, and substrates plays a crucial role in shaping the self-assembly of particles adsorbed on these surfaces. However, little is known about the interplay between particle anisotropy and surface…
For plasmonic nanoparticles, we investigate the influence of surface roughness inherent to top-down fabrication on the optical properties, and find that it has a surprisingly small influence on the position and width of the plasmon peaks.…
Using an interface displacement model derived from a microscopic density functional theory we investigate thin liquidlike wetting layers adsorbed on flat substrates with an embedded chemical heterogeneity forming a stripe. For a wide range…
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…
Nanoparticles with different surface morphologies that straddle the interface between two immiscible liquids are studied via molecular dynamics simulations. The methodology employed allows us to compute the interfacial free energy at…
We propose a novel class of responsive polymer brushes, where the effective grafting density can be controlled by external stimuli. This is achieved by using end-grafted polymer chains that have an affinity to the substrate. For…