Related papers: Polymer Welding: Strength Through Entanglements
We present a pedagogical review of the swelling thermodynamics and phase transitions of polymer gels. In particular, we discuss how features of the volume phase transition of the gel's osmotic equilibrium is analogous to other transitions…
Thermally actuated twisted and coiled polymer (TCP) artificial muscles exhibit exceptional specific work capacities but are limited by an inherent competition between load-bearing capacity and actuation stroke. To address this limitation,…
Achieving damage tolerance in composite materials remains a central challenge in materials science. Conventional strategies often rely on filler incorporation or chemical modification, which can limit energy dissipation and constrain…
The volume phase transition of microgels is one of the most paradigmatic examples of stimuli-responsiveness, enabling a collapse from a highly swollen microgel state into a densely coiled state by an external stimulus. Although well…
Active filament-like systems propelling along their backbone exist across the scales ranging from motor-driven bio-filaments to worms and robotic chains. In macroscopic active filaments such as chain of robots, in contrast to their…
An overview on recent developments in thermal interfaces is given with a focus on a novel thermal interface technology that allows the formation of 2-3 times thinner bondlines with strongly improved thermal properties at lower assembly…
Vitrimers are a class of crosslinked polymer that are capable of undergoing bond exchange reactions, allowing structural reorganization while maintaining overall network integrity. Two key features that are particularly relevant when this…
We present a thermal activated solvent bonding technique for the formation of embedded microstrucutres in polymer. It is based on the temperature dependent solubility of polymer in a liquid that is not a solvent at room temperature. With…
Polymer chains decorated with a fraction of monomers capable of forming reversible bonds form transient polymer networks that are important in soft and biological systems. If chains are flexible and the attractive monomers are all of the…
We propose a continuum theory to model the Mullins effect, which is ubiquitously observed in polymer composites. In the theory, the softening of the materials during the stretching process is accounted for by considering the delamination of…
Despite a century of use, the mechanism of nanoparticle-driven mechanical reinforcement of elastomers is unresolved. A major hypothesis attributes it to glassy interparticle bridges, supported by an observed inversion of the variation of…
Stretched polymers with attractive interaction are studied in two and three dimensions. They are described by biased self-avoiding random walks with nearest neighbour attraction. The bias corresponds to opposite forces applied to the first…
Numerous models have been developed in the literature to simulate the thermomechanical behavior of amorphous polymer at large strain. These models generally show a good agreement with experimental results when the material is submitted to…
We study the adsorption of polymer chains on a fluctuating surface. Physical examples are provided by polymer adsorption at the rough interface between two non-miscible liquids, or on a membrane. In a mean-field approach, we find that the…
We study theoretically situations where competition arises between an interdiffusion process and a cross-linking chemical reaction at interfaces between pieces of the same polymer material. An example of such a situation is observable in…
We discuss the onset of the thermalization process in high-energy heavy-ion collisions from a weak coupling perspective, using classical-statistical real-time lattice simulations as a first principles tool to study the pre-equilibrium…
Molecular dynamics simulations have been used to study a collective atomic transport phenomenon by repeated Ar$^+$ irradiations in the Ti/Pt interfacial system. The ion-induced injection of surface atoms to the bulk, the ejection of bulk…
Theoretical aspects of polymers in mixed solvents are considered using the Edwards Hamiltonian formalism. Thermodynamic and structural properties are investigated and some predictions are made when the mixed solvent approaches criticality.…
We investigate computationally the pullout of a spherical intruder initially buried at the bottom of a granular column. The intruder starts to move out of the granular bed once the pulling force reaches a critical value, leading to material…
We report the observation of a premelting transition at chemically sharp solid-liquid interfaces using molecular-dynamics simulations. The transition is observed in the solid-Al/liquid-Pb system and involves the formation of a liquid…