Related papers: Probing temperature-responsivity of microgels and …
Scanning Thermal Microscopy (SThM) has become an important measurement tool for characterizing the thermal properties of materials at the nanometer scale. This technique requires a SThM probe that combines an Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM)…
We investigate the temperature dependent phase behaviour of mixtures of poly(Nisopropylacrylamide) (pNIPAM) microgel colloids and a triblock copolymer (PEO-PPO-PEO) surfactant, which undergoes micellisation. Gelation in these systems…
High-resolution gas phase spectroscopy techniques in the microwave, millimeter-wave and terahertz spectral ranges can be used to study complex organic molecules desorbed from interstellar ice analogues surface with a high sensitivity.…
Unstructured proteins can modulate cellular responses to environmental conditions by undergoing coil-globule transitions and phase separation. However, the molecular mechanisms of these phenomena still need to be fully understood. Here, we…
Theory is presented for the phase stability of mixtures containing nanospheres and non-adsorbing reversible supramolecular polymers. This was made possible by incorporating the depletion thickness and osmotic pressure of reversible…
The combination of soft responsive particles, such as microgels, with nanoparticles (NPs) yields highly versatile complexes of great potential for applications, from ad-hoc plasmonic sensors to controlled protocols for loading and release.…
The incredible thermo-mechanical properties of biological materials arise from the microscopic scale due to a complex hierarchical mechanism, regulated by microinstabilities at the molecular level. The description of such complex structures…
Size and shape are critical discriminators between molecular species and states. We describe a micro-chip based high-throughput imaging approach offering rapid and precise determination of molecular properties under native solution…
The viscoelastic properties of thin polymeric films represent a central issue, especially for nanotechnological applications. In particular, it is highly relevant the dependence of viscoelasticity on the temperature. For polystyrene it is…
Monolayers of soft colloidal particles confined at fluid interfaces have been attracting increasing interest for fundamental studies and applications alike. However, establishing the relation between their internal architecture, which is…
Molecular dynamics simulations have been employed to study the formation of a physical (thermoreversible) gel by amphiphilic A-B-A triblock copolymers in aqueous solution. In order to mimic the structure of hydrogel-forming polypeptides…
Poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAM) is a synthetic polymer that is widely studied for its thermoresponsive character. However, recent works also reported evidence of a low temperature (protein-like) dynamical transition around 225 K in…
Hydrophobic interactions are central to biological self-assembly and soft matter organization, yet their microscopic origins remain debated. A key hallmark is the strengthening of attraction between hydrophobic solutes with increasing…
Temperature-sensitive hydrogels based on polymers such as poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAM) undergo a volume phase transition in response to changes in temperature. During this transition, distinct changes in both thermal and mechanical…
Molecular dynamic simulations were employed to study a water-like model confined between hydrophobic and hydrophilic plates. The phase behavior of this system is obtained for different distances between the plates and particle-plate…
Scanning Thermal Microscopy (SThM) uses micromachined thermal sensors integrated in a force sensing cantilever with a nanoscale tip can be highly useful for exploration of thermal management of nanoscale semiconductor devices. As well as…
Confinement can have a considerable effect on the behavior of particle systems, and is therefore an effective way to discover new phenomena. A notable example is a system of identical bosons at low temperature under an external field…
Hollow microgels, consisting of a pNIPAM polymer network with a central cavity, have significant potential due to their tunable softness and encapsulation capabilities. Using molecular dynamics simulations, we thoroughly characterise the…
The rising complexity of cutting-edge cryogenic systems is currently imposing challenging technical constraints to the monitoring of ultra-cold temperatures through standard commercially available sensors. Among different alternative…
Microgels, cross-linked polymers with submicrometer size, are ideal soft model systems. While spherical microgels have been studied extensively, anisotropic microgels have been hardly investigated. In this study, we compare the interfacial…