Related papers: Counterion-Induced Swelling of Ionic Microgels
Thermoresponsive microgels are soft colloids that find widespread use as model systems for soft matter physics. Their complex internal architecture, made of a disordered and heterogeneous polymer network, has been so far a major challenge…
A critical advantage of electrostatic assemblies over covalent and crystalline bound materials is that associated structures can be disassembled into their original constituents. Nanoscale devices designed for the controlled release of…
The problem of determining the threshold of motion of a sediment particle resting on the bed of an open channel has historically been dominated by an approach based on the time-space-averaged bed shear stress (i.e. Shields criterion).…
The uptake and sorption of charged molecules by responsive polymer membranes and hydrogels in aqueous solutions is of key importance for the development of soft functional materials. Here we investigate the partitioning of simple monoatomic…
We describe the elasticity of compressed microgel suspensions starting from a core--shell model for the single particle. The mechanical properties of the inner core and of the outer corona are described via the mean field Flory theory, and…
When sheared, most elastic solids such as metals, rubbers and polymer hydrogels dilate in the direction perpendicular to the shear plane. This well-known behaviour known as the Poynting effect is characterized by a positive normal stress.…
We consider an osmotic equilibrium between bulk solutions of polyelectrolyte bounded by semipermeable membranes and separated by a thin film of salt-free liquid. Although the membranes are neutral, the counter-ions of the polyelectrolyte…
When a gel absorbs solvent from surrounding, stress field is created in the gel, and this causes complex dynamics of the swelling behavior. Here we study this effect for disk-shaped gel by rigorously solving the diffusio-mechanical coupling…
Ferrogels, i.e., hydrogels loaded with magnetic nanoparticles, have the ability to deform in external magnetic fields. The precise shape of deformation and the alignment of the gel in the field, however, depend on the interplay of several…
Metabolic substrates, such as oxygen and glucose, are rapidly delivered to the cell through filtration across microvessels walls. Modelling this important process is complicated by the coupling between flow and transport equations, which…
In this work, we explore the statistical physics of colloidal particles that interact with electrolytes via ion-specific interactions. Firstly we study particles interact weakly with electrolyte using linear response theory. We find that…
The interfacial tension of a liquid droplet surrounded by another liquid in the presence of microscopic ions is studied as a function of the droplet radius. An analytical expression for the interfacial tension is obtained within a linear…
For a system of Brownian particles interacting via a soft exponential potential we investigate the interaction between equilibrium crystallization and spatially varying shear flow. For thermodynamic state points within the liquid part of…
Thermodynamic properties of charge-stabilised colloidal suspensions depend sensitively on the effective charge of the macroions, which can be substantially lower than the bare charge in the case of strong counterion-macroion association. A…
Responsive poly-N-isopropylacrylamide-based microgels are commonly used as model colloids with soft repulsive interactions. It has been shown that the microgel-microgel interaction in solution can be easily adjusted by varying the…
Counterion adsorption on a flexible polyelectrolyte chain in a spherical cavity is considered by taking a "permuted" charge distribution on the chain so that the "adsorbed" counterions are allowed to move along the backbone. We compute the…
From microactuators to biological tissues, non-porous materials with the ability to strongly expand when in contact with a solvent are ubiquitous. Consequently, the swelling of polymer systems such as hydrogel has received recently much…
Dispersing small particles in a liquid can produce surprising behaviors when the solids fraction becomes large: rapid shearing drives these systems out of equilibrium and can lead to dramatic increases in viscosity (shear-thickening) or…
We demonstrate that emulsion droplets stabilized by interfacial particles become unstable beyond a size threshold set by gravity. This holds not only for colloids but supra-colloidal glass beads, using which we directly observe the ejection…
We developed a new physical model to predict macroscopic properties of inorganic molten systems using a realistic description of inter-atomic interactions. Unlike the conventional approach, which tends to overestimate viscosity by several…