Related papers: Phase Separation and Ripening in a Viscoelastic Ge…
The dynamics of phase separation in multi-component bilayer fluid vesicles is investigated by means of large-scale dissipative particle dynamics. The model explicitly accounts for solvent particles, thereby allowing for the very first…
Partitioning of (bio)materials in polymeric mixtures is a key phenomenon both in cellular environments, as well as in industrial applications. In cells, several macromolecules are suspended within different biomolecular phases. On the other…
We study the problem of phase separation in systems with a positive definite order parameter, and in particular, in systems with absorbing states. Owing to the presence of a single minimum in the free energy driving the relaxation kinetics,…
Hydrodynamics is known to have strong effects on the kinetics of phase separation. There exist open questions on how such effects manifest in systems under confinement. Here, we have undertaken extensive studies of the kinetics of phase…
We report a preliminary numerical study by kinetic Monte Carlo simulation of the dynamics of phase separation following a quench from high to low temperature in a system with a single, conserved, scalar order parameter (a kinetic Ising…
A general model is formulated for elasto-plastic materials undergoing linear kinematic hardening to describe microstructure evolution associated with phase transformations. Using infinitesimal strain theory, the model is based on…
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…
We use experiments and theory to elucidate the size effect in capillary breakup rheometry, where pre-stretching in the visco-capillary stage causes the apparent relaxation time to be consistently smaller than the actual value. We propose a…
Viscoelastic phase separation of colloidal suspensions can be interrupted to form gels either by glass transition or by crystallization. With a new confocal microscopy protocol, we follow the entire kinetics of phase separation, from…
We use large-scale molecular dynamics simulations of a simple glass-forming system to investigate how its liquid-gas phase separation kinetics depends on temperature. A shallow quench leads to a fully demixed liquid-gas system whereas a…
We perform computer simulations of a Cahn-Hilliard model of phase separation which has dynamical asymmetry between the two coexisting phases. The dynamical asymmetry is incorporated by considering a mobility function which is order…
Various biological and chemical processes lead to the nucleation and growth of non-wetting fluid bubbles within the pore space of a granular medium, such as the formation of gas bubbles in liquid-saturated lake-bed sediments. In…
Swelling is a volumetric-growth process in which a porous material expands by spontaneous imbibition of additional pore fluid. Swelling is distinct from other growth processes in that it is inherently poromechanical: Local expansion of the…
Spinodal demixing of systems into two phases having very different viscosities leads to viscoelastic networks, i.e. gels. Here we consider demixing in a colloidal system where one phase is a nematic liquid crystal with a strongly…
Phase separation can drive spatial organization of multicomponent mixtures. For instance in developing animal embryos, effective phase separation descriptions have been used to account for the spatial organization of different tissue types.…
It is shown that the dynamics of a two-dimensional crystal with a finite concentration of dislocations, as well as vacancy and interstitial defects, is governed by the hydrodynamic equations of a viscoelastic medium. At the longest length…
We present a pedagogical review of the swelling thermodynamics and phase transitions of polymer gels. In particular, we discuss how features of the volume phase transition of the gel's osmotic equilibrium is analogous to other transitions…
We investigate the aggregation and phase separation of thin, living T. tubifex worms that behave as active polymers. Randomly dispersed active worms spontaneously aggregate to form compact, highly entangled blobs, a process similar to…
Phase separation plays an role in determining the self-assembly of biological and soft-matter systems. In biological systems, liquid-liquid phase separation inside a cell leads to the formation of various macromolecular aggregates. The…
We have designed a new experimental setup able to investigate fracture of soft materials at small scales. At high crack velocity, where energy is mostly dissipated through viscoelastic processes, we observe an increasingly large high strain…