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We present a modified version of our "sliding model", where chain arcs, between two contacts at the surface, may move if all the barriers along the arc are weaker than a certain threshold.An important advance of the revised model is that…
We measure the isothermal rejuvenation of stable glass films of poly(styrene) and poly(methylmethacrylate). We demonstrate that the propagation of the front responsible for the transformation to a supercooled-liquid state can serve as a…
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…
Chemical bonding in 2D layered materials and van der Waals solids is central to understanding and harnessing their unique electronic, magnetic, optical, thermal and superconducting properties. Here we report the discovery of spontaneous,…
Thin block copolymer films have attracted considerable academic attention because of their ability to self-assemble into various microstructures, many of which have potential technological applications. Despite the ongoing interest, little…
Freezing or solidification of impacting droplets is omnipresent in nature and technology, be it a rain droplet falling on a supercooled surface, be it in inkjet printing where often molten wax is used, be it in added manufacturing or in…
Soft, amorphous solids such as tissues, foams, and emulsions are composed of deformable particles. However, the effect of single-particle deformability on the collective behavior of soft solids is still poorly understood. We perform…
Self-healing of polymer films often takes place as the molecules diffuse across a damaged region, above their melting temperature. Using molecular dynamics simulations we probe the healing of polymer films and compare the results with those…
Active polymers possess numerous unique properties that are quite different from those observed in the system of small active molecule due to the intricate interplay between their activity and topological constraints. This study focuses on…
By means of sophisticated Monte Carlo methods, we investigate the conformational phase diagram of a simple model for flexible polymers with explicit thickness. The thickness constraint, which is introduced geometrically via the global…
The inert polymer polyethylene glycol (PEG) induces a "bundling" phenomenon in F-actin solutions when its concentration exceeds a critical onset value C_o. Over a limited range of PEG molecular weight and ionic strength, C_o can be…
We investigate the crystallization of crosslinked and entangled polymers under external deformation using a coarse-grained poly(vinyl alcohol) (CG-PVA) model and molecular dynamics simulations. Following uniaxial deformation, the systems…
The coupled dynamics of two conjugated liquid layers of disparate thicknesses, which coat a solid substrate and are subjected to a transverse temperature gradient, is investigated. The upper liquid layer evolves under the short-wavelength…
We present results from extensive molecular dynamics simulations of collapse transitions of hydrophobic polymers in explicit water focused on understanding effects of lengthscale of the hydrophobic surface and of attractive interactions on…
A geometrically nonlinear continuum mechanical theory is formulated for deformation and failure behaviors of amorphous polymers. The model seeks to capture material response over a range of loading rates, temperatures, and stress states…
Polymer thin films doped with azobenzene molecules do have the ability to organize themselves in spontaneous surface relief gratings (SRG) under irradiation with a single polarized beam. To shed some light in this still unexplained…
In an earlier preprint (V. V. Ginzburg, O. V. Gendelman, R. Casalini, and A. Zaccone, arxiv:2409.17291), we demonstrated that the dynamic (relaxation time) and volume equations of state for many amorphous polymers are near-universal -- each…
We study a random heteropolymer model with Langevin dynamics, in the supersymmetric formulation. Employing a procedure similar to one that has been used in static calculations, we construct an ensemble in which the affinity of the system…
Creating amorphous solid states by randomly bonding an ensemble of dense liquid monomers is a common procedure which is applied to create a variety of materials such as epoxy resins, colloidal gels, and vitrimers. The properties of the…
We use computer simulations to study the microscopic dynamics of an athermal assembly of soft particles near the fluid-to-solid, jamming transition. Borrowing tools developed to study dynamic heterogeneity near glass transitions, we…