Related papers: Interplay between self-assembly and phase separati…
The Ohta-Kawasaki equation models the mesoscopic phase separation of immiscible polymer chains that form diblock copolymers, with applications in directed self-assembly for lithography. We perform a mathematical analysis of this model under…
When liquid-crystal elastomers are prepared without any alignment, disordered polydomain structures emerge as the materials are cooled into the nematic phase. These polydomain structures have been attributed to quenched disorder in the…
We study the phase structure of a dilute two-component Fermi system with attractive interactions as a function of the coupling and the polarization or number difference between the two components. In weak coupling, a finite number asymmetry…
By means of classical density functional theory and its dynamical extension, we consider a colloidal fluid with spherically-symmetric competing interactions, which are well known to exhibit a rich bulk phase behavior. This includes complex…
The effect of quenched disorder in the one-dimensional asymmetric exclusion process is reviewed. Both particlewise and sitewise disorder generically induces phase separation in a range of densities. In the particlewise case the existence of…
Obtaining a rigorous and reliable method for linking computer simulations of polymer blends and composites at different length scales of interest is a highly desirable goal in soft matter physics. In this paper a multiscale modeling…
Nanocomposite materials made of block copolymer and nanoparticles display properties which can be different from the purely polymeric matrix. The resulting material is a crossover of the original properties of the block copolymer and the…
Partially phase-separated liquid-crystal/polymer dispersions display highly fibrillar domain morphologies that are dramatically different from the typical structures found in isotropic mixtures. To explain this, we numerically explore the…
We propose a model for chiral polymerisation and investigate its symmetric and asymmetric solutions. The model has a source species which decays into left- and right-handed types of monomer, each of which can polymerise to form homochiral…
We report Monte Carlo simulations of the self-assembly of supramolecular polymers based on a model of patchy particles. We find a first-order phase transition, characterized by hysteresis and nucleation, toward a solid bundle of polymers,…
We present a simple yet generic model for the behavior of a system of many surface-attached flexible polymers with rigid side chains. Beyond its potential application in describing the dynamics of the extracellular matrix of mammalian…
Equilibration of polymer melts containing highly entangled long polymer chains in confinement or with free surfaces is a challenge for computer simulations. We approach this problem by first studying polymer melts based on the soft-sphere…
Molecular dynamics simulations are used to study the phase behavior of a single linear multiblock copolymer with blocks of A- and B-type monomers under poor solvent conditions, varying the block length $N$, number of blocks $n$, and the…
We present a new simulation technique to study systems of polymers functionalized by reactive sites that bind/unbind forming reversible linkages. Functionalized polymers feature self-assembly and responsive properties that are unmatched by…
Spatially uniform electric fields have been used to induce instabilities in liquids and polymers, and to orient and deform ordered phases of block-copolymers. Here we discuss the demixing phase transition occurring in liquid mixtures when…
When two types of side chains (A,B) are densely grafted to a (stiff) backbone and the resulting bottle-brush polymer is in a solution under poor solvent conditions, an incompatibility between A and B leads to microphase separation in the…
Multifarious assembly models consider multiple structures assembled from a shared set of components, reflecting the efficient usage of components in biological self-assembly. These models are subject to a high-dimensional parameter space,…
A simple expression for the composition dependence of the Flory-Huggins interaction parameter of polymer/solvent systems reported earlier is used to model the demixing of polymer solutions into two liquid phases. To this end the system…
In this paper we review some recent results, obtained jointly with Stu Whittington, for a mathematical model describing a copolymer in an emulsion. The copolymer consists of hydrophobic and hydrophilic monomers, concatenated randomly with…
Polymer chains decorated with a fraction of monomers capable of forming reversible bonds form transient polymer networks that are important in soft and biological systems. If chains are flexible and the attractive monomers are all of the…