Related papers: Controlled gel expansion through colloid oscillati…
We investigate with Monte Carlo computer simulations the capillary phase behaviour of model colloid-polymer mixtures confined between a flat wall and a corrugated wall. The corrugation is modelled via a sine wave as a function of one of the…
Liquid mixtures composed of colloidal particles and much smaller non-adsorbing linear homopolymers can undergo a gelation transition due to polymer-mediated depletion forces. We now show that the addition of linear polymers to suspensions…
We investigate the stationary flow of a colloidal gel under an inhomogeneous external shear force using adaptive Brownian dynamics simulations. The interparticle forces are derived from the Stillinger-Weber potential, where the three-body…
We report experimental and simulation studies of the structure of a monolayer of indented ("lock and key") colloids, on a planar surface. On adding a non-absorbing polymer with prescribed radius and volume fraction, depletion interactions…
Using molecular dynamics computer simulations we investigate the structural and dynamical properties of a simple model for a colloidal gel at low volume fraction. We find that at low T the system is forming an open percolating cluster,…
Carefully tuned composite materials can have properties wholly unlike their separate constituents. We review the development of one example: colloid-stabilized emulsions with bicontinuous liquid domains. These non-equilibrium structures…
An important goal of self-assembly is to achieve a preprogrammed structure with high fidelity. Here, we control the valence of DNA-functionalized emulsions to make linear and branched model polymers, or `colloidomers'. The distribution of…
The rheology of pressure-driven flows of two-dimensional dense monodisperse emulsions in neutral wetting microchannels is investigated by means of mesoscopic lattice simulations, capable of handling large collections of droplets, in the…
The nucleation of cavities in a homogenous polymer under tensile strain is investigated in a coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulation. In order to establish a causal relation between local microstructure and the onset of cavitation, a…
We consider the swelling kinetics of layered structures. We focus on the case of triblock copolymer mesogels, although our results are applicable to other layered structures including clays. We assume the mesogels are swollen by a solvent…
Colloidal gels are prime examples of functional materials exhibiting disordered, amorphous, yet meta-stable forms. They maintain stability through short-range attractive forces and their material properties are tunable by external forces.…
Active gels are a class of biologically-relevant material containing embedded agents that spontaneously generate forces acting on a sparse filament network. In vitro experiments of protein filaments and molecular motors have revealed a…
We present a theoretical approach to scale the artificially fast dynamics of simulated coarse-grained polymer liquids down to its realistic value. As coarse-graining affects entropy and dissipation, two factors enter the rescaling:…
Responsive particles, such as biomacromolecules or hydrogels, display a broad and polymodal distribution of conformations and have thus the ability to change their properties (e.g, size, shape, charge density, etc.) substantially in…
Ample experimental evidence has been accumulated demonstrating that the formation of monodispersed colloids proceeds through a more complex mechanism, than the generally excepted diffusional "burst nucleation" process. Instead, the…
Emergent behaviors occur in a vast array of systems across many scales, and are of fundamental physical importance because of the intrinsic difficulty in linking microscopic system properties to macroscopic behaviors. Here we study the…
By means of molecular dynamics, we study the structure and the dynamics of a microscopic model for colloidal gels at low volume fractions. The presence of directional interactions leads to the formation of a persistent interconnected…
The equilibrium phase behavior of a binary mixture of charged colloids and neutral, non-adsorbing polymers is studied within free-volume theory. A model mixture of charged hard-sphere macroions and ideal, coarse-grained, effective-sphere…
To gain insight into the kinetics of colloidal gel evolution at low particle volume fractions $\phi$, we utilize differential dynamic microscopy to investigate particle aggregation, geometric percolation, and the subsequent transition to…
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…