Related papers: Entropy driven thermo-gelling vitrimer
The internal dynamics of active gels, both in artificial (in-vitro) model systems and inside the cytoskeleton of living cells, has been extensively studied by experiments of recent years. These dynamics are probed using tracer particles…
Nanomagnetism concerns the engineering of magnetic interactions in heterostructures that consist of layers of magnetic and non-magnetic materials. Mostly, these interactions are dominated by the minimization of energy. Here, we propose an…
The static and dynamic properties of ring polymers in concentrated solutions remains one of the last deep unsolved questions in Polymer Physics. At the same time, the nature of the glass transition in polymeric systems is also not well…
We report on rate-dependent fracture energy measurements over three decades of steady crack velocities in alginate and gelatin hydrogels. We evidence that, irrespective of gel thermo-reversibility, thermally activated "unzipping" of the…
Geopolymers are an emerging class of binding materials used in sustainable cements, concretes, and composites. However, despite growing research, the lack of standardised processes and stability analyses for formulating activator solutions…
Recent experiments have demonstrated that the nonlinear elasticity of in vitro networks of the biopolymer actin is dramatically altered in the presence of a flexible cross-linker such as the abundant cytoskeletal protein filamin. The basic…
Polymer-related materials exhibit rich glassy behaviors at different length scales due to their various molecular structures and topological constraints. Recent studies have identified transient interpenetration of the long-chain rings…
Since their discovery in 2011, vitrimers - covalent associative network polymers - have challenged the traditional understanding of soft matter relaxation dynamics: unlike in typical glass-forming liquids, vitrimers' viscous relaxation can…
Thermal metamaterials provide rich control of heat transport which is becoming the foundations of cutting-edge applications ranging from chip cooling to biomedical. However, due to the fundamental laws of physics, the manipulation of heat…
We have connected the dynamic fragility, namely the rapidity of the relaxation time increase upon temperature reduction, to the excess entropy and heat capacity of a large number of glass-forming polymers. The connection was obtained in a…
We utilize the lattice cluster theory (LCT) of polymer fluids to show that the configurational entropy, enthalpy, and internal energy are all closely interrelated, as suggested by recent measurements by Caruthers and Medvedev, so that the…
We use computer simulations to study the (driven) dynamics of a charged polymer in a disordered medium, thus mimicking the setting used in gel electrophoresis. In agreement with experiments, we find that inside the gel the mobility of the…
Atmospheric systems incorporating thermal dynamics must be stable with respect to both energy and entropy. While energy conservation can be enforced via the preservation of the skew-symmetric structure of the Hamiltonian form of the…
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…
Living cells display a remarkable capacity to compartmentalize their functional biochemistry. A particularly fascinating example is the cell nucleus. Exchange of macromolecules between the nucleus and the surrounding cytoplasm does not…
We show theoretically that a superconducting critical temperature can be effectively increased in a high-entropy mixture of electrons belonging to conduction and valence bands. In order to employ the entropy of mixing into the…
We performed Langevin dynamics simulations of amphiphilic polymers that contain strongly associating stickers connected by long soluble chain segments. We explored the aging of a thermoreversible gel which is crosslinked by aggregates…
Twenty years ago Poole et al. (Nature 360, 324, 1992) suggested that the anomalous properties of supercooled water may be caused by a critical point that terminates a line of liquid-liquid separation of lower-density and higher-density…
Contact electrification, or contact charging, refers to the process of static charge accumulation after rubbing, or even simple touching, of two materials. Despite its relevance in static electricity, various natural phenomena, and numerous…
We present a generic formulation of the continuum elasticity of an isotropic crosslinked active gel. The gel is described by a two-component model consisting of an elastic network coupled frictionally to a permeating fluid. Activity is…