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We study the structure and dynamics of a transient network composed of droplets of microemulsion connected by telechelic polymers. The polymer induces a bridging attraction between droplets without changing their shape. A viscoelastic…
Reversible crosslinking is a design paradigm for polymeric materials, wherein they are microscopically reinforced with chemical species that form transient crosslinks between the polymer chains. Besides the potential for self-healing,…
We investigate the dynamics of alginate gels, an important class of biopolymer-based viscoelastic materials, by combining mechanical tests and non-conventional, time-resolved light scattering methods. Two relaxation modes are observed upon…
A long standing puzzle in the rheology of living cells is the origin of the experimentally observed long time stress relaxation. The mechanics of the cell is largely dictated by the cytoskeleton, which is a biopolymer network consisting of…
Solutions of polymer chains are modelled using non-equilibrium Brownian dynamics simulations, with physically associative beads which form reversible crosslinks to establish a system-spanning physical gel network. Rheological properties…
Low-density "equilibrium" gels that consist of a percolated, kinetically arrested network of colloidal particles and are resilient to aging can be fabricated by restricting the number of effective bonds that form between the colloids.…
We study model near-critical polymer gelling systems made of gluten proteins dispersions stabilized at different distances from the gel point. We impose different shear rates and follow the time evolution of the stress. For sufficiently…
Recent experimental investigations have revealed a non-Maxwellian absorption pattern in the rheological spectra of actin gels, which was interpreted in terms of transient bonds. Here we examine the consequences of reversible crosslinking on…
We propose and study a simplified model for the surface and bulk structures of crosslinked polymer gels, into which voids are introduced through templating by surfactant micelles. Such systems were recently studied by Atomic Force…
Dynamically crosslinked semiflexible biopolymers such as the actin cytoskeleton govern the mechanical behavior of living cells. Semiflexible biopolymers nonlinearly stiffen in response to mechanical loads, whereas the crosslinker dynamics…
Vitrimers are a relatively new class of polymeric materials containing associative covalent dynamic bonds that make them recyclable by design. However, the fundamental mechanisms controlling their viscoelastic properties remain poorly…
We present a theoretical framework for the linear and nonlinear visco-elastic properties of reversibly crosslinked networks of semiflexible polymers. In contrast to affine models where network strain couples to the polymer end-to-end…
Viscoelastic and thermodynamic properties of transient gels comprised of telechelic polymers are theoretically studied. We extend classical theories of transient networks so that correlations among polymer chains through the network…
The time-dependent stress relaxation for a Rouse model of a crosslinked polymer melt is completely determined by the spectrum of eigenvalues of the connectivity matrix. The latter has been computed analytically for a mean-field distribution…
We use molecular dynamics computer simulations to investigate the relaxation dynamics of a simple model for a colloidal gel at a low volume fraction. We find that due to the presence of the open spanning network this dynamics shows at low…
In order to study rheological properties of gelling systems in dilute solution, we investigate the viscosity and the normal stresses in the Zimm model for randomly crosslinked monomers. The distribution of cluster topologies and sizes is…
We investigate the linear viscoelasticity of polymer gels produced by the dispersion of gluten proteins in water:ethanol binary mixtures with various ethanol contents, from pure water to 60% v/v ethanol. We show that the complex…
We study two cross-linked polymer systems in the strong stretching regime. The first consists of two polymers sharing one endpoint, with the other two endpoints coupled by a harmonic potential. Within the weakly bending approximation, we…
Understanding the relationship between the microscopic structure and topology of a material and its macroscopic properties is a fundamental challenge across a wide range of systems. Here, we investigate the viscoelasticity of DNA nanostar…
In order to study the viscoelastic properties of certain complex fluids which are described in terms of a multiconnected transient network we have developed a convenient model system composed of microemulsion droplets linked by telechelic…