Related papers: Structuring polymer gels via catalytic reactions
The presence of nanoparticles in a diblock copolymer leads to changes in the morphology and properties of the matrix and can produce highly organized hybrid materials. The resulting material properties depend not only on the polymer…
Chemically-responsive polymers are macromolecules that respond to local variations of the chemical composition of the solution by changing their conformation, with notable examples including polyelectrolytes, proteins and DNA. The polymer…
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…
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…
In recent experiments involving PNIPAM copolymers it has been observed that stable spherical nanoparticles are being formed by association of several chains in poor aqueous solution instead of aggregation. This type of mesoscopic structures…
We investigate the aggregation kinetics of a simulated telechelic polymer gel. In the hybrid Molecular Dynamics (MD) / Monte Carlo (MC) algorithm, aggregates of associating end groups form and break according to MC rules, while the position…
Polymers with both soluble and insoluble blocks typically self-assemble into micelles, aggregates of a finite number of polymers where the soluble blocks shield the insoluble ones from contact with the solvent. Upon increasing…
We report on quantitative comparisons between simulation results of a bead-spring model and mode-coupling theory calculations for the structural and conformational dynamics of a supercooled, unentangled polymer melt. We find…
We combine small angle scattering experiments and simulations to investigate the internal structure and interactions of composite Poly(N-isopropylacrylamide)-Poly(ethylene glycol) (PNIPAM-PEG) microgels. At low temperatures the…
Collapse of the polymer chain upon the sharp decrease of solvent quality is studied. During collapse, any pair of polymer units appearing in a sufficiently close vicinity in space has the possibility with a certain probability to form an…
We introduce a polymer model where the transition from swollen to compact configurations is due to interactions between the monomers and the solvent. These interactions are the origin of the effective attractive interactions between…
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…
We address the response of a random heteropolymer to preferential solvation of certain monomer types at the globule-solvent interface. For each set of monomers that can comprise the molecule's surface, we represent the ensemble of allowed…
We investigate a lattice model of polymers where the nearest-neighbour monomer-monomer interaction strengths differ according to whether the local configurations have so-called ``hydrogen-like'' formations or not. If the interaction…
We investigated the viscoelastic properties of colloid-polymer mixtures at intermediate colloid volume fraction and varying polymer concentrations, thereby tuning the attractive interactions. Within the examined range of polymer…
Thermoresponsive microgels are polymeric colloidal networks that can change their size in response to a temperature variation. This peculiar feature is driven by the nature of the solvent-polymer interactions, which triggers the so-called…
Fluids with spatial density variations of single or mixed molecules play a key role in biophysics, soft matter and materials science. The fluid structures usually form via spinodal decomposition or nucleation following an instantaneous…
Diblock copolymers by virtue of the chemical dissimilarity between the constituting blocks exhibit microphase separation in the melt state. The phase separated melt can successfully be exploited to control the morphology of the final semi…
The addition of enough non-adsorbing polymer to an otherwise stable colloidal suspension gives rise to a variety of phase behavior and kinetic arrest due to the depletion attraction induced between the colloids by the polymers. We report a…
Motivated by the organization of crosslinked cytoskeletal biopolymers, we present a semimicroscopic replica field theory for the formation of anisotropic random networks of semiflexible polymers. The networks are formed by introducing…