Related papers: Shape variation of micelles in polymer thin films
Wrinkling patterns at the metallized surface of thin polymer films are shown to be sensitive to the sticky or slippery character of the polymer/substrate interface (titanium coating, polystyrene film and coated silicon substrate). Selective…
We report the results of Monte Carlo simulations investigating the effect of a spherical confinement within a simple model for a flexible homopolymer. We use the parallel tempering method combined with multi-histogram reweighting analysis…
Many biological and synthetic materials self-assemble into helical or twisted aggregates. The shape is determined by a complex interplay between elastic forces and the orientation and chirality of the constituent molecules. We study this…
The glass transition temperature and its connection to statistical properties of confined and free-standing polymer films of varying thickness containing unentangled to highly entangled bead-spring chains are studied by molecular dynamics…
Silica-carbonate biomorphs are a class of emergent materials, i.e. composite microstructures made of nanometric carbonate crystallites surrounded by amorphous silica. They form via a co-precipitation process in an interplay between alkaline…
Within self-consistent field theory we study the phase behaviour of a symmetric binary AB polymer blend confined into a thin film. The film surfaces interact with the monomers via short range potentials. One surface attracts the A component…
During development, organisms acquire three-dimensional shapes with important physiological consequences. While the basic mechanisms underlying morphogenesis are known in eukaryotes, it is often difficult to manipulate them in vivo. To…
Recent experiments on vesicles formed from block copolymers with liquid-crystalline side-chains reveal a rich variety of vesicle morphologies. The additional internal order ("structure") developed by these self-assembled block copolymer…
Polypeptide-based diblock copolymers forming either well-defined self-assembled micelles or vesicles after direct dissolution in water or in dichloromethane, have been studied combining light and neutron scattering with electron microscopy…
Understanding the complex self-assembly of biomacromolecules is a major outstanding question. Microtubules are one example of a biopolymer that possesses characteristics quite distinct from standard synthetic polymers that are derived from…
We report an experimental study on the drying of silica colloidal dispersions. Here we focus on a surface instability occurring in a drying paste phase before crack formation which affects the final film quality. Observations at macroscopic…
The morphology of spherically confined flexoelectric fluid membrane vesicles in an external uniform electric field is studied numerically. Due to the deformations induced by the confinement, the membrane becomes polarized resulting in an…
The shear-thickening behaviour of wormlike micelles, at concentrations just below overlap, remains unexplained. In some cases it has recently been confirmed that very slow relaxations must be present even in the quiescent state -- for…
In this work we investigate structural properties of native states of a simple model for short flexible homopolymers, where the steric influence of monomeric side chains is effectively introduced by a thickness constraint. This geometric…
Bacteria often form surface-bound communities, embedded in a self-produced extracellular matrix, called biofilms. Quantitative studies of their growth have typically focused on unconfined expansion above solid or semi-solid surfaces,…
Amphiphilic block copolymers self-assemble into diverse nanoscale morphologies with significant implications for drug delivery. This work presents systematic Brownian dynamics simulations of multi-chain diblock and triblock copolymers…
Polycrystalline thin films can be unstable with respect to island formation (agglomeration) through grooving where grain boundaries intersect the free surface and/or thin film-substrate interface. We develop a phase-field model to study the…
Studies of random close packing of spheres have advanced our knowledge about the structure of systems such as liquids, glasses, emulsions, granular media, and amorphous solids. When these systems are confined their structural properties…
We carry out numerical simulations of vesicle formation based on the density functional theory for block copolymer solutions. It is shown by solving the time evolution equations for concentrations that a polymer vesicle is spontaneously…
The phase behaviour of amphiphilic multiblock copolymers with a large number of blocks in semidilute solutions is studied by lattice Monte Carlo simulations. The influence on the resulting structures of the concentration, the solvent…