Related papers: Polymer brush collapse under shear flow
We describe the design of micropatterned surfaces for single cell studies, based on thermoresponsive polymer brushes. We show that brushes made of poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) grafted at high surface density display excellent protein and…
We have explored a model for adsorption of water into slit-like nanochannels with two walls chemically modified by grafted polymer layers forming brushes. A version of density functional method is used as theoretical tools. The water-like…
We study the influence of chain stiffness on droplet flow in a nano-channel, coated with semiflexible hydrophobic polymers by means of non-equilibrium molecular-dynamics simulations. The studied system is then a moving droplet in the slit…
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.…
Non equilibrium coarse grained, dissipative particle dynamics simulations of complex fluids, made up of polymer brushes tethered to planar surfaces immersed in a solvent yield non monotonic behavior of the friction coefficient as a function…
Shells, when confined, can deform in a broad assortment of shapes and patterns, often quite dissimilar to what is produced by their flat counterparts (plates). In this work we discuss the morphological landscape of shells deposited on a…
The role of solvent quality in determining the universal material properties of dilute polymer solutions undergoing steady simple shear flow is examined. A bead-spring chain representation of the polymer molecule is used, and the influence…
The structure and degree of order in soft matter and other materials is intimately connected to the nature of the interactions between the particles. One important research goal is to find suitable control mechanisms, to enhance or suppress…
In this work, we study the deformation behavior of thin films of various soft glassy materials that are simultaneously subjected to two creep flow fields, rotational shear flow by applying torque and elongational flow by applying normal…
We propose a continuum theory to model the Mullins effect, which is ubiquitously observed in polymer composites. In the theory, the softening of the materials during the stretching process is accounted for by considering the delamination of…
We determine the distribution of free ends and the monomer insertion potential in the strongly-stretched limit for regularly and statistically branched polymer brushes. We find that the end density flattens in the limit of very strong…
Cellulose nanocrystals (CNC) are naturally-derived nanostructures of growing importance for the production of composites having attractive mechanical properties, and offer improved sustainability over purely petroleum-based alternatives.…
Surface creasing in swelling polymer gels is commonly attributed to compressive strain or interlayer mismatch, yet its general control remains unclear. Here we show that solvent polymerization degree $N_{\rm s}$ provides an independent…
We consider edge effects in grafted polymer layers under compression. For a semi-infinite brush, the penetration depth of edge effects $\xi\propto h_0(h_0/h)^{1/2}$ is larger than the natural height $h_0$ and the actual height $h$. For a…
A coarse-grained model to describe the lateral structure of a one-component polymer brush is presented. In this model, a single polymer chain is described by just two coordinates, namely the position of the grafted monomer, and the monomer…
We explore the effect of an attractive interaction between parallel-aligned polymers, which are perpendicularly grafted on a substrate. Such an attractive interaction could be due to, e.g., reversible cross-links. The competition between…
We investigate polyelectrolyte brushes in the osmotic regime using both theoretical analysis and molecular dynamics simulation techniques. In the simulations at moderate Bjerrum length, we observe that the brush height varies weakly with…
Buckling induced by viscous flow changes the shape of sheet-like nanomaterial particles suspended in liquids. This instability at the particle scale affects collective behavior of suspension flows and has many technological and biological…
We have developed a new multiscale simulation technique to investigate history-dependent flow behavior of entangled polymer melt, using a smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulation with microscopic simulators that account for the dynamics…
The structural aspects of polyacrylamide thin films annealed at degradation threshold temperature have been studied as a function of annealing time using in situ X-ray reflectivity technique in vacuum. We observe significant decrease of…