Related papers: Mediating gel formation from structurally controll…
We use computer simulations to investigate how a catalytic reaction in a polymer sol can induce the formation of a polymer gel. To this aim we consider a solution of homopolymers in which freely-diffusing catalysts convert the originally…
We demonstrated recently that polyelectrolytes with cationic moieties along the chain and a single anionic head are able to form physical hydrogels due to the reversible nature of the head-to-body ionic bond. Here we generate a variety of…
Heteropolymer gels can be engineered to release specific molecules into or absorb molecules from a surrounding solution. This remarkable ability is the basis for developing gel applications in extensive areas such as drug delivery, waste…
By means of Langevin dynamics simulations, we investigate the gel formation of randomly functionalized polymers in solution, with the ability to form both intra- and intermolecular reversible bonds. Under highly dilute conditions, these…
We propose a theory based on non-equilibrium thermodynamics to describe the mechanical behavior of an active polymer gel created by the inclusion of molecular motors in its solvent. When activated, these motors attach to the chains of the…
In order to allow the simultaneous transport of hydrophilic and hydrophobic substances, polymeric networks with finely distributed hydrophilic and hydrophobic components are very suitable. When designing new soft materials like coatings, in…
The formation of soluble hydrogen-bonding interpolymer complexes between poly(acrylic acid) (PAA) and poly(acrylic acid-co-2-acrylamido-2-methyl-1-propane sulfonic acid)-graft-poly(N, N dimethylacrylamide) (P(AA-co-AMPSA)-g-PDMAM) at pH =…
We analyze solutions of strongly charged chains bridged by linkers such as multivalent ions. The gelation induced by the strong short range electrostatic attractions is dramatically suppressed by the long range electrostatic correlations…
The present work emphasizes the relevance of low-field NMR relaxometry to investigate colloid-polymer hydrogels by probing water dynamics across a wide range of formulations between $\rm 10^{\circ}C$ and $\rm 80^{\circ}C$. By examining the…
When a swollen, thermoresponsive polymer gel is heated in a solvent bath, it expels solvent and deswells. When this heating is slow, deswelling proceeds homogeneously, as observed in a toroid-shaped gel that changes volume whilst…
Synthetic methods to control the structure of materials at sub-micron scales are typically based on the self-assembly of structural building blocks with precise size and morphology. On the other hand, many living systems can generate…
The physical gelation of colloids produces elastic structures that are commonly used to stabilize complex fluids in multiple industries. However, the ability to control the level of elastic modulus of these materials is limited by the…
We present further evidence that gelation is an arrested phase separation in attractive colloid-polymer mixtures, based on a method combining confocal microscopy experiments with numerical simulations recently established in {\bf Nature…
We present an experimentally guided, multi-phase, multi-species polyelectrolyte gel model to make quantitative predictions on the electro-chemical properties of articular cartilage. The mixture theory consists of two different types of…
We investigate the phenomenon of multilayer formation via layer-by-layer deposition of alternating charge polyelectrolytes. Using mean-field theory, we find that a strong short-range attraction between the two types of polymer chains is…
Polyelectrolyte gels are a very attractive class of actuation materials with remarkable electronic and mechanical properties with a great similarity to biological contractile tissues. They consist of a polymer network with ionizable groups…
Through a combination of rheological characterization and temperature-variable imaging methods, a novel gelation pathway in dilute solutions of a semiconducting polymer to achieve interconnected, crystalline networks with hierarchical…
Molecular dynamics simulations have been employed to study the formation of a physical (thermoreversible) gel by amphiphilic A-B-A triblock copolymers in aqueous solution. In order to mimic the structure of hydrogel-forming polypeptides…
Rod-shaped colloids with attractive tips can form linear aggregates that may subsequently undergo hierarchical self-assembly into nematic fluids. Inspired by recent modelling efforts on chromonic liquid crystals, composed of discotic…
We develop a new quantitative molecular theory of liquid-phase dipolar polymer gels. We model monomer units of the polymer network as a couple of charged sites separated by a fluctuating distance. For the first time, within the random phase…