Related papers: Under pressure: Hydrogel swelling in a granular me…
Flowing granular materials often abruptly arrest if not driven by sufficient applied stresses. Such abrupt cessation of motion can be economically expensive in industrial materials handling and processing, and is significantly consequential…
Recent studies demonstrated that an elastomer containing hygroscopic inclusions absorbs moisture and swell. Here we show that a thin film of such an elastomer bonded to a rigid substrate undergoes morphological instability upon absorption…
Chemical gardens are mineral aggregates that grow in three dimensions with plant-like forms and share properties with self-assembled structures like nano-scale tubes, brinicles or chimneys at hydrothermal vents. The analysis of their shapes…
In swelling porous media, the potential for flow is much more than pressure, and derivations for flow equations have yielded a variety of equations. In this paper we show that the macroscopic flow potentials are the electro-chemical…
Water behaves very differently at surfaces and under extreme confinement, but the boundary between these two regimes has remained unclear. Despite evidence that interfacial effects persist under sub-nanometre confinement, the…
Soft-granular media, such as dense emulsions, foams or tissues, exhibit either fluid- or solid-like properties depending on the applied external stresses. Whereas bulk rheology of such materials has been thoroughly investigated, the…
Cells swimming in confined environments are attracted by surfaces. We measure the steady-state distribution of smooth-swimming bacteria (Escherichia coli) between two glass plates. In agreement with earlier studies, we find a strong…
Ionic microcapsules are hollow shells of hydrogel, typically 10-1000 nm in radius, composed of cross-linked polymer networks that become charged and swollen in a good solvent. The ability of microcapsules to swell/deswell in response to…
Understanding hydrogen-grain boundary (GB) interactions is critical to the analysis of hydrogen embrittlement in metals. This work presents a mesoscale fully kinetic model to investigate the effect of GB misorientation on hydrogen diffusion…
Friction experiments were conducted on hydrogel thin films sliding against a rigid sphere in a low velocity regime where molecular adsorption at the sliding interface sets the friction force, through a dissipative…
The mechanism of cold- and pressure-denaturation are matter of debate. Some models propose that when denaturation occurs more hydrogen bonds between the molecules of hydration water are formed. Other models identify the cause in the density…
We describe a set-up for studying adsorption of helium in silica aerogels, where the adsorbed amount is easily and precisely controlled by varying the temperature of a gas reservoir between 80 K and 180 K. We present validation experiments…
Hydrogels are widespread soft materials, which can serve a wide range of applications. The control over the viscoelastic properties of the gel is of paramount importance. Ongoing environmental issues have raised the consumer's concern…
Cohesive granular materials such as wet sand, snow, and powders can flow like a viscous liquid. However, the elementary mechanisms of momentum transport in such athermal particulate fluids are elusive. As a result, existing models for…
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…
Precisely measuring pressure in microfluidic flows is essential for flow control, fluid characterization, and monitoring, but faces specific challenges such as \RE{achieving} sufficient resolution, non-invasiveness, or ease of use. Here, we…
We report surface hardening or crust formation, unlike caking, during drying when a confined porous medium was heated from above using IR radiation. These crusts have higher strength than their closest counterparts such as sandcastles and…
Thin elastic solids are easily deformed into a myriad of three-dimensional shapes, which may contain sharp localized structures as in a crumpled candy wrapper, or have smooth and diffuse features like the undulating edge of a flower.…
We investigate the observability of hydrogen molecules in absorption. The absorption efficiency of the hydrogen molecules become comparable with or larger than that of the dust grains in the metal-poor condition expected in the early…
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…