Related papers: Entropy driven thermo-gelling vitrimer
We investigate the crystallization of crosslinked and entangled polymers under external deformation using a coarse-grained poly(vinyl alcohol) (CG-PVA) model and molecular dynamics simulations. Following uniaxial deformation, the systems…
We investigate theoretically the effect of polymer tension on the collective behavior of reversibly binding cross-links. For this purpose, we employ a model of two weakly bending wormlike chains aligned in parallel by a tensile force, with…
Gels made of telechelic polymers connected by reversible crosslinkers are a versatile design platform for biocompatible viscoelastic materials. Their linear response to a step strain displays a fast, near-exponential relaxation when using…
Motivated by the organization of crosslinked cytoskeletal biopolymers, we present a semimicroscopic replica field theory for the formation of anisotropic random networks of semiflexible polymers. The networks are formed by introducing…
Vitrimer is a new, exciting class of sustainable polymers with the ability to heal due to their dynamic covalent adaptive network that can go through associative rearrangement reactions. However, a limited choice of constituent molecules…
The quasi-equilibrium evolution of the helical fraction occurring in a biopolymer network (gelatin gel) under an applied stress has been investigated by observing modulation in its optical activity. Its variation with the imposed chain…
We propose a theory based on non-equilibrium thermodynamics to describe the mechanical behavior of an active polymer gel created by the inclusion of molecular motors in its solvent. When activated, these motors attach to the chains of the…
Animal cells form contractile structures to promote various functions, from cell motility to cell division. Force generation in these structures is often due to molecular motors such as myosin that require polar substrates for their…
This paper describes a novel integrated circuit technology to manufacture high-density thermoelectric devices on a semiconductor wafer. With no moving parts, a thermoelectric cooler operates quietly, allows cooling below ambient…
We study the thermodynamics of binary mixtures with the volume fraction of the minority component less than the amount required to form a flat interface and show that the surface tension dominated equilibrium phase of the mixture forms a…
We probe the mechanisms at work in the build-up of thermoreversible gel networks, with the help of hybrid gelatin gels containing a controlled density of irreversible, covalent crosslinks (CL), which we quench below the physical gelation…
In many industrial processes, pieces of the same polymer material are brought into contact at a temperature above the glass transition. Interdiffusion then takes place across the interface and leads to a strengthening of the junction.…
A central question concerning glass-formation has been what governs the kinetic arrest of the quenched liquid - cooling reduces the thermal energy which molecules need to surmount local potential barriers, while the accompanying volume…
Polymer chains decorated with a fraction of monomers capable of forming reversible bonds form transient polymer networks that are important in soft and biological systems. If chains are flexible and the attractive monomers are all of the…
The forces that mixtures of motorized and passive crosslinking proteins collectively generate between cytoskeletal filaments within our cells are the key drivers of active cellular mechanics. Despite their importance, a unified theory to…
Many glass-forming fluids exhibit a remarkable thermodynamic scaling in which dynamic properties, such as the viscosity, the relaxation time, and the diffusion constant, can be described under different thermodynamic conditions in terms of…
The structural arrest of a polymeric suspension might be driven by an increase of the cross--linker concentration, that drives the gel transition, as well as by an increase of the polymer density, that induces a glass transition. These…
As the interface between human and machine becomes blurred, hydrogel incorporated electronics and devices have emerged to be a new class of flexible/stretchable electronic and ionic devices due to their extraordinary properties, such as…
Grafting linkers with open ends of complementary single-stranded DNA makes a flexible tool to tune interactions between colloids,which facilitates the design of complex self-assembly structures. Recently, it has been proposed to coat…
We study phase behaviours of lipid--bilayer vesicles functionalised by ligand--receptor complexes made of synthetic DNA by introducing a modelling framework and a dedicated experimental platform. In particular, we perform Monte Carlo…