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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…
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…
From biological tissues to layers of paint, macroscopic non-porous materials with the capacity to swell when brought in contact with an appropriate solvent are ubiquitous. Here, we study experimentally and theoretically one of the…
Thermoresponsive poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAM) particles of different sizes are synthesized by varying the concentration of sodium dodecyl sulphate (SDS) in a one-pot method. The sizes, size polydispersities and the…
Assembled metal/insulator nanoparticles with a core/shell geometry provide access to materials containing a large number (>106) of tunneling barriers. We demonstrate the production of ceramic coated metal nanoparticles exhibiting an…
Thermoresponsive polymer architectures have become integral building blocks of 'smart' functional materials in modern applications. For a large range of developments, e.g., for drug delivery or nanocatalytic carrier systems, the selective…
Core-shell nanoparticles, particularly those having a gold core, have emerged as a highly promising class of materials due to their unique optical and thermal properties, which underpin a wide range of applications in photothermal therapy,…
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 study the adsorption of homogeneous or heterogeneous polymers onto heterogeneous planar surfaces with exponentially decaying site-site correlations, using a variational reference system approach. As a main result, we derive simple…
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…
The thermosensitivity and microstructure of microgels made by copolymerizing standard microgel-forming monomers with more hydrophilic comonomers is investigated, with the aim of increasing the volume phase transition temperature (VPTT). We…
Ionic microgel particles are intriguing systems in which the properties of thermo-responsive polymeric colloids are enriched by the presence of charged groups. In order to rationalize their properties and predict the behaviour of microgel…
We study swelling and structural properties of ionic microgel suspensions within a comprehensive coarse-grained model that combines the polymeric and colloidal natures of microgels as permeable, compressible, charged spheres governed by…
Understanding polymer adsorption at interfaces is essential for designing advanced polymer-based nanomaterials with tailored interfacial properties. Although adsorption significantly influences the macroscopic properties of polymer…
We present an ab initio study of the structural and electronic properties of styrene molecules adsorbed on the dimerized Si(100) surface at different coverages, ranging from the single-molecule to the full monolayer. The adsorption…
A convenient method has been developed to thin electron beam fabricated Silicon nanopillars under controlled surface manipulation by transforming the surface of the pillars to an oxide shell layer followed by the growth of sacrificial…
In order to allow the simultaneous transport of hydrophilic and hydrophobic substances, polymeric networks with finely distributed hydrophilic and hydrophobic components are very suitable. When designing new soft materials like coatings, in…
Microgels are colloidal-scale particles individually made of crosslinked polymer networks that can swell and deswell in response to external stimuli, such as changes to temperature or pH. Despite a large amount of experimental activities on…
Poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAM) is a synthetic polymer that is widely studied for its thermoresponsive character. However, recent works also reported evidence of a low temperature (protein-like) dynamical transition around 225 K in…
InAs nanowires with Al$_x$In$_{1-x}$P or Al$x$In$_{1-x}$As shells were grown on GaAs substrates by the Au-assisted vapour-liquid-solid (VLS) method in a gas source molecular beam epitaxy (GS-MBE) system. Core diameters and shell thicknesses…