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Thermosensitive microgels are widely studied hybrid systems combining properties of polymers and colloidal particles in a unique way. Due to their complex morphology their interactions and packing, and consequentially the viscoelastcity of…
Understanding the relationship between the microscopic structure and topology of a material and its macroscopic properties is a fundamental challenge across a wide range of systems. Here, we investigate the viscoelasticity of DNA nanostar…
We simulate macroscopic shear experiments in active nematics and compare them with microrheology simulations where a spherical probe particle is dragged through an active fluid. In both cases we define an effective viscosity: in the case of…
Microgels are complex macromolecules. These colloid-sized polymer networks possess internal degrees of freedom and, depending on the polymer(s) they are made of, can acquire a responsiveness to variations of the environment (temperature,…
Ferrogels, i.e., hydrogels loaded with magnetic nanoparticles, have the ability to deform in external magnetic fields. The precise shape of deformation and the alignment of the gel in the field, however, depend on the interplay of several…
The microscopic dynamics of objects suspended in a fluid determines the macroscopic rheology of a suspension. For example, as shown by Danker and Misbah [Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 98}, 088104 (2007)], the viscosity of a dilute suspension of…
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 behavior of microgels near surfaces and their adsorption is studied by simple scaling theory. Two different types of microgels can be studied, i.e., fractal type microgels and randomly crosslinked polymer chains. In the first case the…
Simulating percolation and critical phenomena of labelled species inside films composed of single-component linear homogeneous macromolecules using molecular Monte Carlo method in 3 dimensions, we study dependence of these conducting…
The autonomous motion of liquid crystal oil droplets in micellar media arises from spontaneous breaking of time reversal symmetry via nonlinear coupling between Marangoni stresses and surfactant transport. While this phenomenon has been…
Complex fluids, such as polymer solutions and blends, colloids and gels, are of growing interest in fundamental and applied soft-condensed-matter science. A common feature of all such systems is the presence of a mesoscopic structural…
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…
We investigate how the microstructure of a colloidal polycrystal influences its linear viscoelasticity. We use thermosensitive copolymer micelles that arrange in water in a cubic crystalline lattice, yielding a colloidal polycrystal. The…
Complex fluids such as emulsions, colloidal gels, polymer or surfactant solutions are all characterized by the existence of a "microstructure" which may couple to an external flow on timescales that are easily probed in experiments. Such a…
Molecular diffusion measurements are widely used to probe microstructure in materials and living organisms noninvasively. The precise relation of diffusion metrics to microstructure remains a major challenge: In complex samples, it is often…
As an example for the interplay of structure, dynamics, and phase behavior of macromolecular systems, this article focuses on the problem of bottle-brush polymers with either rigid or flexible backbones. On a polymer with chain length…
Soft particles display highly versatile properties with respect to hard colloids, even more so at fluid-fluid interfaces. In particular, microgels, consisting of a cross-linked polymer network, are able to deform and flatten upon adsorption…
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…
The hypersphere model is a simple one-parameter model of the potential energy landscape of viscous liquids, which is defined as a percolating system of same-radius hyperspheres randomly distributed in $\mathbb{R}^{3N}$ in which $N$ is the…
Understanding dynamic and complex interaction of biological membranes with extracellular matrices plays a crucial role in controlling a variety of cell behavior and functions, from cell adhesion and growth to signaling and differentiation.…