Related papers: Studying synthesis confinement effects on the inte…
Systems in which particles can self-assemble into mono- or bilayers can form variety of stable and metastable structures on a nanometer length scale. For this reason confinement has a particularly strong effect on such systems. We discuss…
Microgels made of poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) are the prototype of soft, thermoresponsive particles widely used to study fundamental problems in condensed matter physics. However, their internal structure is far from homogeneous, and…
The formation of (bio)molecular condensates via liquid-liquid phase separation in cells has received increasing attention, as these coacervates play important functional and regulatory roles within biological systems. However, the majority…
Confinement has been suggested as a tool to tune the self-assembly properties of nanoparticles, surfactants, polymers and colloids. In this way, we explore the phase diagram of Janus nanoparticles using Molecular Dynamics simulations. The…
Targeting specific technological applications requires the control of nanoparticle properties, especially the crystalline polymorph. Freezing a nanodroplet deposited on a solid substrate leads to the formation of crystalline structures. We…
We present computer simulations of a realistic model of microgels. Unlike the regular network frameworks usually assumed in the simulation literature, we model and simulate a realistic and efficient synthesis route, mimicking cross-linking…
How the geometry of nano-sized confinement affects dynamics of biomaterials is interesting yet poorly understood. An elucidation of structural details upon nano-sized confinement may benefit manufacturing pharmaceuticals in biomaterial…
We investigate using molecular dynamics the effect of the structure of nanoconfinement for liquids with water-like anomalies and liquid-liquid phase transition (LLPT). We find that if the confinement is in an ordered matrix of nanoparticles…
The diffusion of small molecular penetrants through polymeric materials represents an important fundamental problem, relevant to the design of materials for applications such as coatings and membranes. Polymer networks hold promise in these…
It is well-known that the swelling behavior of ionic nanogels depends on their cross-link density, however it is unclear how different topologies should affect the response of the polyelectrolyte network. Here we perform Monte Carlo…
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…
Magnetic nanogels represent a cutting edge of magnetic soft matter research due to their numerous potential applications. Here, using Langevin dynamics simulations, we analyse the influence of magnetic nanogel concentration and embedded…
Nanocomposite films containing a high volume fraction (> 50vol%) of nanoparticles (NPs) in a polymer matrix are promising for their functionality and use as structural coatings, and also provide a unique platform to understand polymer…
Although wettability is a macroscopic manifestation of molecular-level forces, such as van der Waals (vdW) forces, the impact of nanoconfinement on material properties in reduced film thickness remains unexplored in predicting film…
The physical and chemical properties of metal nanoparticles differ significantly from those of free metal atoms as well as from the properties of bulk metals, and therefore, they may be viewed as a transition regime between the two physical…
Microgels are soft colloids that, in virtue of their polymeric nature, can react to external stimuli such as temperature or pH by changing their size. The resulting swelling/deswelling transition can be exploited in fundamental research as…
We present Monte Carlo computer simulations for melts of semiflexible randomly knotted and randomly concatenated ring polymers on the fcc lattice and in slit confinement. Through systematic variation of the slit width at fixed melt density,…
The properties of nanoconfined fluids can be strikingly different from those of bulk liquids. A basic unanswered question is whether the equilibrium and dynamic consequences of confinement are related to each other in a simple way. We study…
In the cell, protein complexes form relying on specific interactions between their monomers. Excluded volume effects due to molecular crowding would lead to correlations between molecules even without specific interactions. What is the…
By means of Langevin dynamics simulations, we investigate the gel formation of randomly functionalized polymers in solution, with the ability to form both intra- and intermolecular reversible bonds. Under highly dilute conditions, these…