Related papers: Interactions Between a Responsive Microgel Monolay…
Poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAM) is a synthetic polymer that is widely studied for its thermoresponsive character. However, recent works also reported evidence of a low temperature (protein-like) dynamical transition around 225 K in…
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…
Interactions between silica surfaces across isopropanol solutions are measured with colloidal probe technique based on atomic force microscope. In particular, the influence of 1:1 electrolytes on the interactions between silica particles is…
In many physical and biological systems, particles and microorganisms move in the proximity of an interface. Understanding the dynamics of a particle suspended close to an interface is not only important conceptually but is crucial for…
Temperature-sensitive hydrogels based on polymers such as poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAM) undergo a volume phase transition in response to changes in temperature. During this transition, distinct changes in both thermal and mechanical…
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 volume phase transition of microgels is one of the most paradigmatic examples of stimuli-responsiveness, enabling a collapse from a highly swollen microgel state into a densely coiled state by an external stimulus. Although well…
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…
Poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (pNIPAM) microgels are renowned for their thermoresponsive behavior, exhibiting a distinct volume phase transition (VPT) upon temperature changes. This study investigates the influence of microgel softness,…
Controlled crystallization, melting and vitrification are important fundamental processes in nature and technology. However, the microscopic details of these fundamental phenomena still lack understanding, in particular how the cooling rate…
Soft materials, such as colloidal suspensions, polymer solutions, and biological systems, are typically multicomponent mixtures of macromolecules and simpler components (e.g., microions, monomers, solvent) that can assemble into complex…
We present results from extensive molecular dynamics simulations of collapse transitions of hydrophobic polymers in explicit water focused on understanding effects of lengthscale of the hydrophobic surface and of attractive interactions on…
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 electrostatic interaction between colloidal particles trapped at the interface between two immiscible electrolyte solutions is studied in the limit of small inter-particle distances. Within an appropriate model exact analytic…
We probe the temperature dependence of friction at the interface between a glassy poly(methylmethacrylate) lens and a flat substrate coated with a methyl-terminated self-assembled monolayer. The monolayer exhibits density defects which act…
Using fluorescence microscopy we study the adsorption of single latex microparticles at a water/water interface between demixing aqueous solutions of polymers, generally known as a water-in-water emulsion. Similar microparticles at the…
The properties of water can have a strong dependence on the confinement. Here, we consider a water monolayer nanoconfined between hydrophobic parallel walls under conditions that prevent its crystallization. We investigate, by simulations…
Microgels, cross-linked polymers with submicrometer size, are ideal soft model systems. While spherical microgels have been studied extensively, anisotropic microgels have been hardly investigated. In this study, we compare the interfacial…
We provide experimental and numerical evidence of a new class of soft nanocolloids: star-like microgels with thermoresponsive character. This is achieved by using the standard precipitation polymerization synthesis of…
Hydrogel consists of a crosslinked polymer matrix imbibed with a solvent such as water at volume fractions that can exceed 90\%. They are important in many scientific and engineering applications due to their tunable physiochemical…