Related papers: Controlled gel expansion through colloid oscillati…
We investigate volume phase transition in gels immersed in mixture solvents, on the basis of a three-component Flory-Rehner theory. When the selectivity of the minority solvent component to the polymer network is strong, the gel tends to…
Curable hydrogels have tunable properties that make them well-suited for applications in drug delivery, cell therapies, and 3D bioprinting. Advances in microfluidic droplet generation enable rapid fabrication of polymer-filled droplets.…
Driven or self-propelling particles moving in viscoelastic fluids recently emerge as novel class of active systems showing a complex yet rich set of phenomena due to the non-Newtonian nature of the dispersing medium. Here we investigate the…
Foam is a canonical example of disordered soft matter where local force balance leads to the competition of many metastable configurations. Here we present an experimental and theoretical framework for "active foam" where an individual…
We consider the gelation of particles which are permanently connected by random crosslinks, drawn from an ensemble of finite-dimensional continuum percolation. To average over the randomness, we apply the replica trick, and interpret the…
Recent experimental results suggest that the E. coli chromosome feels a self-attracting interaction of osmotic origin, and is condensed in foci by bridging interactions. Motivated by these findings, we explore a generic modeling framework…
The study of interactions between biomimetic membranes and micron-sized particles is crucial for understanding various biological processes. Here, we control microparticle spontaneous engulfment by giant lipid vesicles by tuning particle…
We develop a double mean-field theory for charged macrogels immersed in electrolyte solutions in the spirit of the cell model approach. We first demonstrate that the equilibrium sampling of a single explicit coarse-grained charged polymer…
We use coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations to study the motility of a 2D vesicle containing self-propelled rods, as a function of the vesicle bending rigidity and the number density, length, and activity of the enclosed rods.…
Multiple dissipative self-assembly protocols designed to create novel structures or to reduce kinetic traps have recently emerged. Specifically, temporal oscillations of particle interactions have been shown effective at both aims, but…
In the presence of a non-adsorbing polymer, monodisperse rod-like colloids assemble into one-rod-length thick liquid-like monolayers, called colloidal membranes. The density of the rods within a colloidal membrane is determined by a balance…
Soft colloids allow to explore high density states well beyond random close packing. An important open question is whether softness controls the dynamics under these dense conditions. While experimental works reported conflicting results,…
We develop a new quantitative molecular theory of liquid-phase dipolar polymer gels. We model monomer units of the polymer network as a couple of charged sites separated by a fluctuating distance. For the first time, within the random phase…
A unique bistable transition has been identified in granular/colloidal gel-composites, resulting from shear-induced phase separation of the gel phase into dense blobs. In energy applications, it is critical to understand how this transition…
Attractive colloidal particles can form a disordered elastic solid or gel when quenched into a two-phase region, if the volume fraction is sufficiently large. When the interactions are comparable to thermal energies the stress-bearing…
Magnetic gels with embedded micro/nano-sized magnetic particles in crosslinked polymer networks can be actuated by external magnetic fields, with changes in their internal microscopic structures and macroscopic mechanical properties. We…
The water flow through the poly(acrylamide) gel under a constant water pressure is measured by newly designed apparatus. The time evolution of the water flow in the gel, is calculated based on the collective diffusion model of the polymer…
Computer simulations were used to study the gel transition occurring in colloidal systems with short range attractions. A colloid-polymer mixture was modelled and the results were compared with mode coupling theory expectations and with the…
The non-equilibrium structural and dynamical properties of a flexible polymer tethered to a reflecting wall and subject to oscillatory linear flow are studied by numerical simulations. Polymer is confined in two dimensions and is modeled as…
Dynamical polydispersity in single-particle properties, for example a fluctuating particle size, shape, charge density, etc., is intrinsic to responsive colloids (RCs), such as biomacromolecules or microgels, but is typically not resolved…