Related papers: Effects of linker flexibility on phase behavior an…
Nanoparticle gels have attracted considerable attention due to their highly tunable properties. One strategy for producing nanoparticle gels involves using strong local attractions between polymeric molecules, such as DNA hybridization or…
Low-density "equilibrium" gels that consist of a percolated, kinetically arrested network of colloidal particles and are resilient to aging can be fabricated by restricting the number of effective bonds that form between the colloids.…
Dispersed colloidal particles within a suspension can aggregate and spontaneously self-organize into a robust, percolating structure known as a gel. These network-like structures are prevalent in nature and play a critical role in many…
The possibility of prescribing local interactions between nano- and microscopic components that direct them to assemble in a predictable fashion is a central goal of nanotechnology research. In this article we advance a new paradigm in…
Three-dimensional DNA networks, composed of tri- or higher valent nanostars with sticky, single-stranded DNA overhangs, have been previously studied in the context of designing thermally responsive, viscoelastic hydrogels. In this work, we…
Inorganic nanocrystal gels retain distinct properties of individual nanocrystals while offering tunable, network structure-dependent characteristics. We review different mechanisms for assembling gels from colloidal nanocrystals including…
Colloidal gels formed from small attractive particles are commonly used in formulations to keep larger components in suspension. However, despite extensive work characterizing unfilled gels, little is known about how larger inclusions alter…
Colloids that attractively bond to only a few neighbors (e.g., patchy particles) can form equilibrium gels with distinctive dynamic properties that are stable in time. Here, we use a coarse-grained model to explore the dynamics of linked…
The physical gelation of colloids produces elastic structures that are commonly used to stabilize complex fluids in multiple industries. However, the ability to control the level of elastic modulus of these materials is limited by the…
Colloidal gels are out of equilibrium soft solids composed of attractive Brownian particles that form a space-spanning network at low volume fractions. The elastic properties of these systems result from the network microstructure, which is…
Equilibrium gels of colloidal particles can be realized through the introduction of a second species, a linker that mediates the bonds between the colloids. A gel forming binary mixture whose linkers can self-assemble into linear chains…
Colloidal molecules are designed to mimic their molecular analogues through their anisotropic shape and interactions. However, current experimental realizations are missing the structural flexibility present in real molecules thereby…
Colloidal gels are widely applied in industry due to their rheological character -- no flow takes place below the yield stress. Such property enables gels to maintain uniform distribution in practical formulations; otherwise, solid…
We study colloidal gels formed by competing electrostatic repulsion and short-range attraction by means of extensive numerical simulations under external shear. We show that, upon varying the repulsion strength, the gel structure and its…
We investigated the viscoelastic properties of colloid-polymer mixtures at intermediate colloid volume fraction and varying polymer concentrations, thereby tuning the attractive interactions. Within the examined range of polymer…
We consider a microscopic model of a polymer blend that is prone to phase separation. Permanent crosslinks are introduced between randomly chosen pairs of monomers, drawn from the Deam-Edwards distribution. Thereby, not only density but…
We study analytically the intricate phase behavior of cross-linked $AB$ diblock copolymer melts, which can undergo two main phase transitions due to quenched random constraints: Gelation, i.e., spatially random localization of polymers…
In chemical crosslinking of gelatin solutions, two different time scales affect the kinetics of the gel formation in the experiments. We complement the experimental study with Monte Carlo numerical simulations of a lattice model. This…
Binary compositions of surface ligands are known to improve the colloidal stability and fluorescence quantum yield of nanocrystals (NCs), due to ligand-ligand interactions and surface organization. Herein, we follow the thermodynamics of a…
Colloid-polymer mixtures may undergo either fluid-fluid phase separation or gelation. This depends on the depth of the quench (polymer concentration) and polymer-colloid size ratio. We present a real-space study of dynamics in phase…