Related papers: Interfacial silica nanoparticles stabilize coconti…
We propose a new mechanism to create self-assembled porous media with highly tunable geometrical properties and permeabilities: We first allow a particle-stabilized emulsion to form from a mixture of two fluids and colloidal particles.…
Explicit molecular dynamics simulations were applied to a pair of amorphous silica nanoparticles in aqueous solution, of diameter 4.4 nm with four different background electrolyte concentrations, to extract the mean force acting between the…
Macrocellular silicone polymers are obtained after solidification of the continuous phase of a PDMS (polydimethylsiloxane) emulsion, which contains PEG (polyethylene glycol) drops of sub-millimetric dimensions. Coalescence of the liquid…
A nonequilibrium molecular dynamics computer simulation on microsegregated solutions of symmetrical diblock copolymers is reported. As the polymer concentration increases, the system undergoes phase transitions in the following order: body…
Soft materials possessing tunable rheological properties are desirable in applications ranging from 3D printing to biological scaffolds. Here, we use a telechelic, triblock copolymer polystyrene-b-poly(ethylene oxide)-b-polystyrene (SEOS)…
The effect of silica nanoparticles on transient microemulsion networks made of microemulsion droplets and telechelic copolymer molecules in water is studied, as a function of droplet size and concentration, amount of copolymer, and…
Soft particles such as microgels and core-shell particles can undergo significant and anisotropic deformations when adsorbed to a liquid interface. This, in turn, leads to a complex phase behavior upon compression. Here we develop a…
We predict a diblock copolymer melt in the lamellar phase with added spherical nanoparticles that have an affinity for one block to have a lower tensile modulus than a pure diblock copolymer system. This weakening is due to the swelling of…
This study utilizes self-consistent field theory to characterize various features of cononsolvency-driven spherical micelles formed by double hydrophilic block copolymers (DHBCs). Micelles are observed only at an intermediate cosolvent…
We present a quantitative confocal-microscopy study of the transient and final microstructure of particle-stabilised emulsions formed via demixing in a binary liquid. To this end, we have developed an image-analysis method that relies on…
Nanolayered lamellae are common structures in nanoscience and nanotechnology, but most are nearly symmetric in layer thickness. Here, we report on the structure and mechanics of highly asymmetric and thermodynamically stable soft--hard…
We present a series of experiments investigating the local microstructure of cylindrical piles composed of highly concave particles. By systematically varying particle geometry -- from spheres to strongly non-convex polypods -- as well as…
Using Monte Carlo simulations, we investigate the self-assembly of model nanoparticles inside a matrix of model equilibrium polymers (or matrix of Wormlike micelles) as a function of the polymeric matrix density and the excluded volume…
A study of the reinforcement effect of a soft polymer matrix by hard nanometric filler particles is presented. In the main part of this article, the structure of the silica filler in the matrix is studied by Small Angle Neutron Scattering…
Low-density "equilibrium" gels that consist of a percolated, kinetically arrested network of colloidal particles and are resilient to aging can be fabricated by restricting the number of effective bonds that form between the colloids.…
An important strategy to stabilize emulsions is to arrest coalescence of the constituent droplets with an opposing rheological force. Colloidal particles adsorbed on the surface of emulsion droplets in a Pickering emulsion become…
We discuss structural correlations in mixtures of free polymer and colloidal particles based on a microscopic, 2-component liquid state integral equation theory. Whereas in the case of polymers much smaller than the spherical particles the…
The structural features of polystyrene brushes grafted on spherical silica nanoparticles immersed in polystyrene are investigated by means of a Monte Carlo methodology based on polymer mean field theory. The nanoparticle radii (either 8 nm…
The rapid collapse of a polymer, due to external forces or changes in solvent, yields a long-lived `crumpled globule.' The conjectured fractal structure shaped by hierarchical collapse dynamics has proved difficult to establish, even with…
Helices are not generic outcomes of polymer collapse. Collapsed conformations of semiflexible polymers with isotropic attractions typically form globules, toroids, or rod-like structures, as seen in simulations and described by…