Related papers: Healing of polymer interfaces: Interfacial dynamic…
Large scale molecular dynamics simulations are used to study the dispersion of nanoparticles (NPs) in a polymer film during solvent evaporation. As the solvent evaporates, a dense polymer-rich skin layer forms at the liquid/vapor interface,…
Synthetic polymers have a distribution of chain lengths which can be characterized by dispersity, D. Macroscopic properties of polymers are influenced by chain mobility in the melt and manipulating D can significantly impact these…
Polymer self-adhesion due to the interdiffusion of macromolecules has been an active area of research for several decades [70, 43, 62, 42, 72, 73, 41]. Here, we report a new phenomenon of sub-Tg, solid-state, plasticity-induced bonding;…
A hydrostatically stressed soft elastic film circumvents the imposed constraint by undergoing a morphological instability, the wavelength of which is dictated by the minimization of the surface and the elastic strain energies of the film.…
A statistical mechanical description of flexible and semi-flexible polymer chains in a poor solvent is developed in the constant force and constant distance ensembles. We predict the existence of many intermediate states at low temperatures…
We discuss mechanical buckling instabilities of a rigid film under compression interacting repulsively with a substrate through a thin fluid layer. The buckling occurs at a characteristic wavelength that increases as the 1/4th power of the…
Long-term bone healing/adaptation after a dental implant treatment starts with diffusion of mesenchymal stem cells to the fracture callus and their subsequent differentiation. The healing phase is followed by the bone-remodeling phase. In…
Whereas it is experimentally known that the inclusion of nanoparticles in hydrogels can lead to a mechanical reinforcement, a detailed molecular understanding of the adhesion mechanism is still lacking. Here we use coarse-grained molecular…
Here we present a model of self healing in which correlations between chromophores, as mediated by the polymer, are key to the recovery process. Our model determines the size distribution of the correlation volume using a grand canonical…
In granular media, the presence of even small amounts of interparticle cohesion manifests as an increase in the bulk strength and stiffness, effects that are typically associated with an increase in the average number of constraints per…
We perform molecular dynamics simulations to characterize the occurrence of inhomogeneous shear flows in soft jammed materials. We use rough walls to impose a simple shear flow and study the athermal motion of jammed assemblies of soft…
The interface between two immiscible polymers, polystyrene (PS) and polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), was studied by neutron reflectivity and dewetting by using free PS chains and PDMS brushes. Unexpectedly, we found that the PS chains diffuse…
We investigate the folding and forced-unbinding transitions of adsorbed semiflexible polymer chains using theory and simulations. These processes describe biologically relevant phenomena that include adhesive interactions between proteins…
The collapse and swelling behavior of a generic homopolymer is studied using implicit-solvent, explicit-cosolvent Langevin dynamics computer simulations for varying interaction strengths. The systematic investigation reveals that polymer…
Utilizing colloidal probe, lateral force microscopy and simultaneous confocal microscopy, combined with finite element analysis, we investigate the mechanism of static friction for a microparticle on a soft, adhesive surface. We find that…
We have developed a dynamic self-consistent field theory, without any adjustable parameters, for unentangled polymer blends under shear. Our model accounts for the interaction between polymers, and enables one to compute the evolution of…
Microgels are soft colloids that, in virtue of their polymeric nature, can react to external stimuli such as temperature or pH by changing their size. The resulting swelling/deswelling transition can be exploited in fundamental research as…
Microfluidic channels are integral to biomedical technology and process engineering, offering versatility in handling fluids with complex properties, often a combination of viscous and elastic attributes. Despite significant advancements in…
Employing Molecular Dynamics simulations of a chemically realistic model of 1,4-polybutadiene between graphite walls we show that the mass exchange between layers close to the walls is a slow process already in the melt state. For the glass…
We present computer simulations of a simple bead-spring model for polymer melts with intramolecular barriers. By systematically tuning the strength of the barriers, we investigate their role on the glass transition. Dynamic observables are…