Related papers: Charge affinity and solvent effects in numerical s…
Ultra-low-crosslinked (ULC) microgels are among the softest colloidal particles nowadays routinely synthesized experimentally. Despite a growing literature of experimental results, their microscopic behavior under crowded conditions is yet…
Recent progress in the understanding of the effect of electrostatics in soft matter is presented. A vast amount of materials contains ions ranging from the molecular scale (e.g., electrolyte) to the meso/macroscopic one (e.g., charged…
Counterion distribution around an isolated flexible polyelectrolyte in the presence of a divalent salt is evaluated using the adsorption model [M. Muthukumar, J. Chem. Phys. {\bf 120}, 9343 (2004)] that considers Bjerrum length, salt…
Depending on the volume fraction and interparticle interactions, colloidal suspensions can form different phases, ranging from fluids, crystals, and glasses to gels. For soft microgels that are made from thermoresponsive polymers, the…
We have investigated a single charged microgel in aqueous solution with a combined simulational model and Poisson-Boltzmann theory. In the simulations we use a coarse-grained charged bead-spring model in a dielectric continuum, with…
Particle surface chemistry and internal softness are two fundamental parameters in governing the mechanical properties of dense colloidal suspensions, dictating structure and flow, therefore of interest from materials fabrication to…
The efficiency of soft particles to stabilize emulsions is examined by measuring their desorption free energy, i.e., the mechanical work required to detach the particle from a fluid interface. Here, we consider rubber-like elastic as well…
The structure of polar liquids and electrolytic solutions, such as water and aqueous electrolytes, at interfaces underlies numerous phenomena in physics, chemistry, biology, and engineering. In this work, we develop a continuum theory that…
Stimuli-responsive lyogels are known for their ability to undergo significant macroscopic changes when exposed to external stimuli. While thermo-responsive gels, such as poly N isopropylacrylamide (pNIPAM), have been extensively studied…
Charged colloidal monolayers at the interface between water and air (or oil) are used in a large number of chemical, physical and biological applications. Although a considerable experimental and theoretical effort has been devoted in the…
Catalytically active colloids maintain non-equilibrium conditions in which they produce and deplete chemicals and hence effectively act as sources and sinks of molecules. While individual colloids that are symmetrically coated do not…
We study the phase behavior of a system of charged colloidal particles that are electrostatically bound to an almost flat interface between two fluids. We show that, despite the fact that our experimental system consists of only $10^{3}$ -…
We study the self-assembly of colloidal microgel particles at a quasi-two-dimensional air-water interface of a drying droplet. Using bright-field microscopy, we demonstrate that increasing particle elasticity drives interfacial organization…
The properties of a system of charged particles on a 2D lattice, subject to an anisotropic Jahn-Teller-type interaction and 3D Coulomb repulsion are investigated. In the mean-field approximation without Coulomb interaction, the system…
Recent measurements of microsphere interactions in diverse media suggest that the standard dielectric-continuum models of solution-phase interactions are fundamentally incomplete. Experiments indicate that the interactions of charged…
The electrostatic screening properties of ionic fluids are of paramount importance in countless physical processes. Yet, the behavior of ionic conductors out of thermal equilibrium has to date mainly been studied in the context of…
An approach is proposed which allows to self-consistently calculate the structural and thermodynamic properties of highly charged aqueous colloidal suspensions. The method is based on the renormalized Jellium model with the background…
We investigate end-effects in the ion distribution around strongly charged, flexible polyelectrolytes with a quenched charge distribution by molecular dynamics simulations of dilute polyelectrolyte solutions. We take the counterions…
The elastic properties of a soft matter material can be greatly altered by the presence of solid inclusions whose microscopic properties, such as their size and interactions, can have a dramatic effect. In order to shed light on these…
We show that classical molecular density functional theory (MDFT), here in the homogeneous reference fluid approximation in which the functional is inferred from the properties of the bulk solvent, is a powerful new tool to study, at a…