Related papers: Dynamic Equivalence between Soft Star Polymers and…
Star-like microgels have recently emerged as a promising class of thermoresponsive soft colloids, that have an internal architecture similar to that of star polymers. Here, we perform extensive monomer-resolved simulations to theoretically…
Slow dynamics in a fluid are studied in one of the most basic systems possible: polydisperse hard spheres. Monodisperse hard spheres cannot be studied as the slow down in dynamics as the density is increased is preempted by crystallisation.…
Using monomer-resolved Molecular Dynamics simulations and theoretical arguments based on the radial dependence of the osmotic pressure in the interior of a star, we systematically investigate the effective interactions between hard,…
The structural and dynamical properties of ultra-soft colloids - star polymers - exposed to a uniform external force field are analyzed applying the multiparticle collision dynamics approach, a hybrid coarse-grain mesoscale simulation…
Hard-sphere colloids are popular as models for testing fundamental theories in condensed matter and statistical physics, from crystal nucleation to the glass transition. A single parameter, the volume fraction (phi), characterizes an ideal,…
We report on the linear viscoelastic properties of mixtures comprising multiarm star (as model soft colloids) and long linear chain homopolymers in a good solvent. In contrast to earlier works, we investigated symmetric mixtures (with a…
Soft colloids allow to explore high density states well beyond random close packing. An important open question is whether softness controls the dynamics under these dense conditions. While experimental works reported conflicting results,…
We propose a model to describe the concentration dependence of the viscosity of soft particles. We incorporate in a very simple way the softness of the particles into expressions originally developed for rigid spheres. This is done by…
The principle of dynamic equivalence between soft-sphere and hard-sphere fluids [Phys. Rev. E \textbf{68}, 011405 (2003)] is employed to describe the interplay of the effects of varying the density n, the temperature T, and the softness…
The efficiency of soft particles to stabilize emulsions is examined by measuring their desorption free energy, i.e., the mechanical work required to detach the particle from a fluid interface. Here, we consider rubber-like elastic as well…
The surface tension of interacting polymers in a good solvent is calculated theoretically and by computer simulations for a planar wall geometry and for the insertion of a single colloidal hard-sphere. This is achieved for the planar wall…
Excluded-volume effects can play an important role in determining transport properties in diffusion of particles. Here, the diffusion of finite-sized hard-core interacting particles in two or three dimensions is considered systematically…
Unlike atoms, colloidal particles are not identical, but can only be synthesised within a finite size tolerance. Colloids are therefore polydisperse, i.e. mixtures of infinitely many components with sizes drawn from a continuous…
The simplicity of hard spheres as a model system is deceptive. Although the particles interact solely through volume exclusion, that nevertheless suffices for a wealth of static and dynamical phenomena to emerge, making the model an…
Microgels are soft colloidal particles that, when dispersed in a solvent, swell and deswell in response to changes in environmental conditions, such as temperature, concentration, and $p$H. Using Monte Carlo simulation, we model bulk…
A simple analytic theory for mixtures of hard spheres and larger polymers with excluded volume interactions is developed. The mixture is shown to exhibit extensive immiscibility. For large polymers with strong excluded volume interactions,…
In this work, we consider a semi-dilute solution of identical star-polymers, made of attached flexible long polymer chains of the same polymerization degree N. We first compute the effective pair-potential between star-polymers. Such a…
We show that the kinetic-theoretical self-diffusion coefficient of an atomic fluid plays the same role as the short-time self-diffusion coefficient D_S in a colloidal liquid, in the sense that the dynamic properties of the former, at times…
We perform systematic simulation experiments on model systems with soft-sphere repulsive interactions to test the predicted dynamic equivalence between soft-sphere liquids with similar static structure. For this we compare the simulated…
In our recent work on concentrated suspensions of uniformly porous colloidal spheres with excluded volume interactions, a variety of short-time dynamic properties were calculated, except for the rotational self-diffusion coefficient. This…