Related papers: Bidisperse ring polymers: topological glass to sta…
We investigate with numerical simulations the molecular origin of viscosity in melts of flexible and semiflexible oligomer rings in comparison to corresponding systems with linear chains. The strong increase of viscosity with ring stiffness…
We investigate the mechanical properties of amorphous polymers by means of coarse-grained simulations and nonaffine lattice dynamics theory. A small increase of polymer chain bending stiffness leads first to softening of the material, while…
We present a novel mechanism for resolving the mechanical rigidity of nanoscopic circular polymers that flow in a complex environment. The emergence of a regime of negative differential mobility induced by topological interactions between…
Unlike Stockmayer fluids, that prove to undergo gas-liquid transition on cooling, the system of dipolar hard or soft spheres without any additional central attraction so far has not been shown to have a critical point. Instead, in the…
In this Perspective, I describe recent work on systems in which the traditional distinctions between (i) unentangled vs. well-entangled systems and (ii) melts vs. glasses seem least useful, and argue for the broader use in glassy polymer…
We study numerically the crystallization of a hard-sphere mixture with 8\% polydispersity. Although often used as a model glass former, for small system sizes we observe crystallization in molecular dynamics simulations. This opens the…
Particle size polydispersity can help to inhibit crystallization of the hard-sphere fluid into close-packed structures at high packing fractions and thus is often employed to create model glass-forming systems. Nonetheless, it is known that…
Diffusion of long ring polymers in a melt is much slower than the reorganization of their internal structures. While direct evidences for entanglements have not been observed in the long ring polymers unlike linear polymer melts, threading…
In this paper, we employ Molecular Dynamics computer simulations to study and compare the statics and dynamics of linear and circular (ring) polymer chains in entangled solutions of different densities. While we confirm that linear chain…
The formation of chain-folded structures from the melt is observed in molecular dynamics simulations resembling the lamellae of polymer crystals. Crystallization and subsequent melting temperatures are related linearly to the inverse…
Polymeric particles are strong candidates for designing artificial materials capable of emulating the complex twisting-based functionality observed in biological systems. In this letter, we provide the first detailed investigation of the…
For nearly a century, introduction of nanoparticles to elastomers has yielded extraordinarily tough nanocomposites that are critical to technologies from actuators to tires. The mechanisms by which this reinforcement occurs have…
The evolution of porous structure and mechanical properties of binary glasses under tensile loading were examined using molecular dynamics simulations. We consider vitreous systems obtained in the process of phase separation after a rapid…
Motivated by recent observations that non-concatenated ring polymers in their dense solution exhibit a glass-like dynamics, we propose a free volume description of the motion of such rings based on the notion of topological volume. We first…
Soft-granular media, such as dense emulsions, foams or tissues, exhibit either fluid- or solid-like properties depending on the applied external stresses. Whereas bulk rheology of such materials has been thoroughly investigated, the…
We study of the dynamics of ring polymers confined to diffuse in a background gel at low concentrations. We do this in order to probe the inter-play between topology and dynamics in ring polymers. We develop an algorithm that takes into…
We apply monomer-resolved computer simulations of supercoiled ring polymers under shear, taking full account of the hydrodynamic interactions, accompanied, in parallel, by simulations in which these are switched off. The combination of…
Block copolymer melts self-assemble in the bulk into a variety of nanostructures, making them perfect candidates to template the position of nanoparticles. The morphological changes of block copolymers are studied in the presence of a…
The effects of entanglement and chain orientation on strain hardening in glassy polymers are separated by examining mixtures of chains with different lengths. Simulations show that the orientation of a molecule of a given chain length is…
Molecular dynamics simulations confirm recent extensional flow experiments showing ring polymer melts exhibit strong extension-rate thickening of the viscosity at Weissenberg numbers $Wi<<1$. Thickening coincides with the extreme elongation…