Related papers: Modeling deswelling, thermodynamics, structure, an…
Osmotic pressure is the driving force for the swelling of hydrogels. The hydrogel osmotic pressure can be decomposed into two parts: the mixing part due to polymer-solvent interaction and the elastic part due to polymer chain stretching.…
We present a molecular dynamics study of the effects of confinement on the lubrication and flow properties of ionic liquids. We use a coarse-grained salt model description of ionic liquid as a lubricant confined between finite solid plates…
Transitions in structural heterogeneity of colloidal depletion gels formed through short-range attractive interactions are correlated with their dynamical arrest. The system is a density and refractive index matched suspension of 0.20…
The combination of soft responsive particles, such as microgels, with nanoparticles (NPs) yields highly versatile complexes of great potential for applications, from ad-hoc plasmonic sensors to controlled protocols for loading and release.…
The dynamics of dense particle packings near the jamming transition is characterized by correlated particle motion. The growth of dynamical heterogeneities, or strong spatial variations in the motion of the particles constituting the…
The dynamic behavior of a hard-sphere colloidal suspension was studied by X-ray Photon Correlation Spectroscopy and Small Angle X-ray Scattering over a wide range of particle volume fractions. The short-time mobility of the particles was…
We study the formation of a colloidal gel by means of Molecular Dynamics simulations of a model for colloidal suspensions. A slowing down with gel-like features is observed at low temperatures and low volume fractions, due to the formation…
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…
Discrete element method simulations of confined bidisperse granular shear flows elucidate the balance between diffusion and segregation that can lead to either mixed or segregated states, depending on confining pressure. Results indicate…
Hollow microgels are elastic polymer shells easily realizable in experiments. Recent works have shown the emergence of buckling events in dilute hollow microgels under the effect of an added osmotic pressure. Here, we perform large-scale…
We investigate dynamical heterogeneities in the collective relaxation of a concentrated microgel system, for which the packing fraction can be conveniently varied by changing the temperature. The packing fraction dependent mechanical…
We investigate the collective behavior of suspended thermoresponsive microgels, that expel solvent and subsequently decrease in size upon heating. Using a binary mixture of differently thermoresponsive microgels, we demonstrate how…
This work is devoted to analyze the relation between the thermodynamic properties of a confined fluid and the shape of its confining vessel. Recently, new insights in this topic were found through the study of cluster integrals for…
We analyse the dynamics of different routes to collapse of a constrained polyelectrolyte gel in contact with an ionic bath. The evolution of the gel is described by a model that incorporates non-linear elasticity, Stefan-Maxwell diffusion…
The macroscopic mechanical properties of colloidal particle gels strongly depend on the local arrangement of the powder particles. Experiments have shown that more heterogeneous microstructures exhibit up to one order of magnitude higher…
We study the distribution of colloidal particles confined in drying spherical droplets using both dynamic density functional theory (DDFT) and particle-based simulations. In particular, we focus on the advection-dominated regime typical of…
When an ensemble of particles interact hydrodynamically, they generically display large-scale transient structures such as swirls in sedimenting particles [1], or colloidal strings in sheared suspensions [2]. Understanding these…
Monolayers of soft colloidal particles confined at fluid interfaces have been attracting increasing interest for fundamental studies and applications alike. However, establishing the relation between their internal architecture, which is…
Dynamical polydispersity in single-particle properties, for example a fluctuating particle size, shape, charge density, etc., is intrinsic to responsive colloids (RCs), such as biomacromolecules or microgels, but is typically not resolved…
Colloidal particles that are confined to an interface such as the air-water interface are an example of a two-dimensional fluid. Such dispersions have been observed to spontaneously form cluster and stripe morphologies in certain systems…