Related papers: Characterizing the Interplay between Polymer Solva…
Hydration of hydrophobic solutes in water is the cause of different phenomena, including the hydrophobic heat-capacity anomaly, which are not yet fully understood. Because of its topicality, there has recently been growing interest in the…
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…
We have studied the pearling instability induced on hollow tubular lipid vesicles by hydrophilic polymers with hydrophobic side groups along the backbone. The results show that the polymer concentration is coupled to local membrane…
We introduce a polymer model where the transition from swollen to compact configurations is due to interactions between the monomers and the solvent. These interactions are the origin of the effective attractive interactions between…
We investigate the dynamics and the pathways of the collapse of a single, semiflexible polymer in a poor solvent via 3-D Brownian Dynamics simulations. Earlier work indicates that the condensation of semiflexible polymers generically…
We investigate the collapse kinetics of charged polymers (polyelectrolytes) induced by counterion condensation using coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations. Under good solvent conditions, polyelectrolytes above the critical charge…
Fluid-structure interactions between active and passive components are important for many biological systems to function. A particular example is chromatin in the cell nucleus, where ATP-powered processes drive coherent motions of the…
Spatially uniform electric fields have been used to induce instabilities in liquids and polymers, and to orient and deform ordered phases of block-copolymers. Here we discuss the demixing phase transition occurring in liquid mixtures when…
We employ molecular dynamics simulations to explore how internal flexibility affects phase transitions in soft-matter systems composed of dimers interacting via a core-softened potential with two characteristic length scales. Monomers are…
Protein solubility and conformational stability are a result of a balance of interactions both within a protein and between protein and solvent. The electrostatic solvation free energy of oligoglycines, models for the peptide backbone,…
A polymer network can imbibe water, forming an aggregate called hydrogel, and undergo large and inhomogeneous deformation with external mechanical constraint. Due to the large deformation, nonlinearity plays a crucial role, which also…
Polymers in nonuniform flows undergo strong deformation, which in the presence of persistent stretching can result in the coil-stretch transition. This phenomenon has been characterized by using the formalism of nonequilibrium statistical…
Recent experimental results suggest that the E. coli chromosome feels a self-attracting interaction of osmotic origin, and is condensed in foci by bridging interactions. Motivated by these findings, we explore a generic modeling framework…
In drying liquid films of polymer-colloid mixtures, the stratification in which polymers are placed on top of larger colloids is studied. It is often presumed that the formation of segregated polymer-colloid layers is solely due to the…
We discuss structural correlations in mixtures of free polymer and colloidal particles based on a microscopic, 2-component liquid state integral equation theory. Whereas in the case of polymers much smaller than the spherical particles the…
We present an off-lattice statistical model of a single polymer chain in mixed solvent media. Taking into account a polymer conformational entropy, renormalization of solvent composition near the polymer backbone, the universal…
The non-equilibrium structural and dynamical properties of a flexible polymer tethered to a reflecting wall and subject to oscillatory linear flow are studied by numerical simulations. Polymer is confined in two dimensions and is modeled as…
Recent theoretical works exploring the hydrodynamics of soft material in non-equilibrium situations are reviewed. We discuss the role of hydrodynamic interactions for three different systems: i) the deformation and orientation of…
We investigate the origin of the density depletion and enhanced density fluctuations that occur in water in the vicinity of an extended hydrophobic solute. We argue that both phenomena are remnants of the critical drying surface phase…
Hydrophobic interactions are central to biological self-assembly and soft matter organization, yet their microscopic origins remain debated. A key hallmark is the strengthening of attraction between hydrophobic solutes with increasing…