Related papers: A kinetic model of a polyelectrolyte gel undergoin…
We analyse the dynamics of different routes to collapse of a constrained polyelectrolyte gel in contact with an ionic bath. The evolution of the gel is described by a model that incorporates non-linear elasticity, Stefan-Maxwell diffusion…
Polyelectrolyte gels are a very attractive class of actuation materials with remarkable electronic and mechanical properties with a great similarity to biological contractile tissues. They consist of a polymer network with ionizable groups…
We introduce a microscopically realistic model of a physical gel and use computer simulations to study its static and dynamic properties at thermal equilibrium. The phase diagram comprises a sol phase, a coexistence region ending at a…
We develop a first-principle equation of state of salt-free polyelectrolyte solution in the limit of infinitely long flexible polymer chains in the framework of a field-theoretical formalism beyond the linear Debye-Hueckel theory and…
We study a microscopically realistic model of a physical gel and use computer simulations to investigate its static and dynamic properties at thermal equilibrium. The phase diagram comprises a sol phase, a coexistence region ending at a…
An electric-field-induced phase transition and pattern formation in a binary dielectric fluid layer are studied using a coarse-grained free energy functional. The electrostatic part of the free energy is a nonlinear functional of the…
We present two successive mean-field approximations for describing the mechanical properties and the swelling equilibrium of polyelectrolyte gels in contact with a salt solution. The first mean-field approximation reduces the many-chain…
Polymer gels are comprised of a three-dimensional, cross-linked network that can typically withstand the mechanical deformation associated with both swelling and de-swelling. Thus, gels can be designed with smart behaviors that require both…
We study the effects of charge-regulated acid/base equilibrium on the swelling of polyelectrolyte gels, by considering a combination of the Poisson-Boltzmann theory and a two-site charge-regulation model based on the Langmuir adsorption…
We compare six elastic models for polymer networks in the context of phase separation within a gel, including a new model that combines the finite extensible Arruda-Boyce model and the slip tube model for entangled chains. We study…
We propose a novel phase-field model to predict elastic microphase separation in polymer gels. To this end, we extend the Cahn-Hilliard free-energy functional to incorporate an elastic strain energy and a coupling term. These contributions…
Elastic microphase separation refers to equilibrium patterns that form by phase separation in elastic gels. Recent experiments revealed a continuous phase transition from the homogeneous phase to a regularly patterned phase, whose period…
A consistent treatment of the coupling of surface energy and elasticity within the multi-phase- field framework is presented. The model accurately reproduces stress distribution in a number of analytically tractable, yet non-trivial, cases…
(abridged) We present a detailed derivation of a simple hydrodynamic two-fluid model, which aims at the description of the phase separation of non-entangled polymer solutions, where viscoelastic effects play a role. It is directly based…
We use large-scale computer simulations to explore the non-equilibrium aging dynamics in a microscopic model for colloidal gels. We find that gelation resulting from a kinetically-arrested phase separation is accompanied by `anomalous'…
Room temperature ionic liquids are attractive to numerous applications and particularly, to renewable energy devices. As solvent free electrolytes, they demonstrate a paramount connection between the material morphology and Coulombic…
We study pattern formation in gels undergoing simultaneous phase separation and orientational ordering. A 2D numerical simulation is performed using a minimal model of nonlinear elasticity with density-anisotropy coupling. For strong…
We develop an analytical theory to explain the experimentally-observed morphological transitions of giant vesicles induced by AC electric fields (1). The model treats the inner and suspending media as lossy dielectrics, while the membrane…
A non-isothermal phase field model that captures both displacive and diffusive phase transformations in a unified framework is presented. The model is developed in a formal thermodynamic setting, which provides guidance on admissible…
When a gel absorbs solvent from surrounding, stress field is created in the gel, and this causes complex dynamics of the swelling behavior. Here we study this effect for disk-shaped gel by rigorously solving the diffusio-mechanical coupling…