Related papers: Bidisperse ring polymers: topological glass to sta…
By taking advantage of the molecular weight dependence of the glass transition of polymers and their ability to form perfectly miscible blends, we propose a way to modify the fragility of a system, from fragile to strong, keeping the same…
The interplay of topological constraints and persistence length of ring polymers in their own melt is investigated by means of dynamical Monte Carlo simulations of a three dimensional lattice model. We ask if the results are consistent with…
Large scale molecular dynamics and grand canonical Monte Carlo simulation techniques are used to study the behavior of the interdiffusion of a solvent into an entangled polymer matrix as the state of the polymer changes from a melt to a…
Polymers with both soluble and insoluble blocks typically self-assemble into micelles, aggregates of a finite number of polymers where the soluble blocks shield the insoluble ones from contact with the solvent. Upon increasing…
A discrete model for the sintering of polydisperse, inhomogeneous arrays of cylinders is presented with empirical contact force-laws, taking into account plastic deformations, cohesion, temperature dependence (melting), and long-time…
Motivated by the idea of using simple macroscopic examples to illustrate the physics of complex systems, we modify a historic experimental setup in which interacting floating magnets spontaneously self-assemble into ordered clusters. By…
Bonding between polymeric interfaces is encountered widely in several industrial applications. Many of these bonding processes rely on time-consuming and temperature-dependent classical mechanism of polymer interdiffusion via reptation in a…
Recent theories predict that when a supercooled liquid approaches the glass transition, particle clusters with a special "amorphous order" nucleate within the liquid, which lead to static correlations dictating the dramatic slowdown of…
A wide range of materials can exist in microscopically disordered solid forms, referred to as amorphous solids or glasses. Such materials -- oxide glasses and metallic glasses, to polymer glasses, and soft solids such as colloidal glasses,…
Solids deform and fluids flow, but soft glassy materials, such as emulsions, foams, suspensions, and pastes, exhibit an intricate mix of solid and liquid-like behavior. While much progress has been made to understand their elastic (small…
We experimentally study the crystallization of a monolayer of vibrated discs with a built-in polar asymmetry, a model system of active liquids, and contrast it with that of vibrated isotropic discs. Increasing the packing fraction $\phi$,…
Molecular dynamics simulation of a generic polymer model is applied to study melts of polymers with different types of intrinsic stiffness. Important static observables of the single chain such as gyration radius or persistence length are…
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…
The close packing density of log-normal and bimodal distributed, surface-adsorbed particles or discs in 2D is studied by numerical simulation. For small spread in particle size, the system orders in a polycrystalline structure of hexagonal…
Thin films of diblock copolymer subject to gravitational field are simulated by means of a cell dynamical system model. The difference in density of the two sides of the molecule and the presence of the field causes the formation of…
The emergence of the solid state in glass-forming materials upon cooling is accompanied by changes in both thermodynamic and viscoelastic properties and by a precipitous drop in fluidity. Here, we investigate changes in basic elastic…
Thin polymer films have attracted attention because of both their broad range of applications and of the fundamental questions they raise regarding the dynamic response of confined polymers. These films are unstable if the temperature is…
A mode-coupling theory for dense polymeric systems is developed which unifyingly incorporates the segmental cage effect relevant for structural slowing down and polymer chain conformational degrees of freedom. An ideal glass transition of…
We present an event-driven molecular dynamics study of glass formation in two-dimensional binary mixtures composed of hard disks and hard ellipses, where both types of particles have the same area. We demonstrate that characteristic…
We perform computer simulations of mechanically linked (poly[2]catenanes, PC) and chemically bonded (bonded rings, BR) pairs of self-avoiding ring polymers in steady shear. We find that BR's develop a novel motif, termed gradient tumbling,…