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Polymer brushes are attractive as surface coatings for a wide range of applications, from fundamental research to everyday life, and also play important roles in biological systems. How colloids (e.g., functional nanoparticles, proteins,…
Colloidal spheres synthesized from polymer gels swell by absorbing molecules from solution. The resulting change in size can be monitored with nanometer precision using holographic video microscopy. When the absorbate is chemically similar…
The application of a polymer brush in sensing, actuation, self-folding, among others acutely depends on the tuneable bending of a brush-grafted substrate caused by the stress in the brush. However, the stress in a stimuli-responsive brush…
Random sequential adsorption algorithm is a popular tool for modelling structure of monolayers built in irreversible adsorption experiments. However, this algorithm becomes very inefficient when the density of molecules in a layer rises.…
We study the motion of dispersed nanoprobes in entangled active-passive polymer mixtures. By comparing the two architectures of linear vs. unconcatenated and unknotted circular polymers, we demonstrate that novel, rich physics emerge. For…
The volume phase transition of microgels is one of the most paradigmatic examples of stimuli-responsiveness, enabling a collapse from a highly swollen microgel state into a densely coiled state by an external stimulus. Although well…
Processes on different length scales affect the dynamics of chain molecules. In this work, we focus on structures on the scale of a monomer and investigate polyolefins, i.e. hydrocarbon chains with different small scale architectures. We…
Whereas it is experimentally known that the inclusion of nanoparticles in hydrogels can lead to a mechanical reinforcement, a detailed molecular understanding of the adhesion mechanism is still lacking. Here we use coarse-grained molecular…
We study the conformational behavior of a polymer adsorbed at an attractive nanostring and construct the complete structural phase diagram in dependence of the binding strength and effective thickness of the string. For this purpose, Monte…
We describe a microscope-based optical setup that allows us to perform space-and time-resolved measurements of the spectral reflectance of transparent substrates coated with ultrathin films. This technique is applied to investigate the…
Core-shell Au@pNIPAM nanocomposites are assembled through a simple and inexpensive approach where drops of bulk nanoparticle solution are left to dry on ITO surfaces at fixed and finely tuned temperatures. Interparticle distances are…
Multivalent particles bind to targets via many independent ligand-receptor bonding interactions. This microscopic design spans length scales in both synthetic and biological systems. Classic examples include interactions between cells,…
The coupled dynamics of entangled polymers which span a broad time and length scales govern the unique viscoelastic properties of polymers. To follow chain mobility by numerical simulations from the intermediate Rouse and reptation regimes…
We propose a theoretical investigation of the physical adsorption of neutral comb-polymers with an adsorbing skeleton and non-adsorbing side-chains on a flat surface. Such polymers are particularly interesting as "dynamic coating" matrices…
We present a new simulation scheme which allows an efficient sampling of reconfigurable supramolecular structures made of polymeric constructs functionalized by reactive binding sites. The algorithm is based on the configurational bias…
Nanoparticles functionalized with multiple ligands can be programmed to bind biological targets depending on the receptors they express, providing a general mechanism exploited in various technologies, from selective drug-delivery to…
Soft membranes are commonly employed in shape-morphing applications, where the material is programmed to achieve a target shape upon activation by an external trigger, and as coating layers that alter the surface characteristics of bulk…
Obtaining a rigorous and reliable method for linking computer simulations of polymer blends and composites at different length scales of interest is a highly desirable goal in soft matter physics. In this paper a multiscale modeling…
Thermal conductivities are routinely calculated in molecular dynamics simulations by keeping the boundaries at different temperatures and measuring the slope of the temperature profile in the bulk of the material, explicitly using Fourier's…
An infinite hierarchy of layering transitions exists for model polymers in solution under poor solvent or low temperatures and near an attractive surface. A flat histogram stochastic growth algorithm known as FlatPERM has been used on a…