Related papers: Charge Asymmetry Suppresses Coarsening Dynamics in…
The late-stage phase ordering, in $d=2$ dimensions, of symmetric fluid mixtures violates dynamical scaling. We show however that, even at 50/50 volume fractions, if an asymmetric droplet morphology is initially present then this sustains…
Chemically-responsive polymers are macromolecules that respond to local variations of the chemical composition of the solution by changing their conformation, with notable examples including polyelectrolytes, proteins and DNA. The polymer…
We theoretically study sedimentation-diffusion equilibrium of dilute binary, ternary, and polydisperse mixtures of colloidal particles with different buoyant masses and/or charges. We focus on the low-salt regime, where the entropy of the…
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…
Understanding the phase behaviour of mixtures continues to pose challenges, even for systems that might be considered "simple". Here we consider a very simple mixture of two colloidal and one non-adsorbing polymer species which can be…
Living and engineered systems rely on the stable coexistence of two interspersed liquid phases. Yet surface tension drives their complete separation. Here we show that stable droplets of uniform and tuneable size can be produced through…
A binary mixture of oppositely charged components confined to a plane such as cationic and anionic lipid bilayers may exhibit local segregation. The relative strength of the net short range interactions, which favors macroscopic…
A theoretical model of vapor-liquid phase transition in a system of charged hard cores of different diameters is suggested (with the parameters of the transition obtained in a number of studies using the Monte Carlo method). The model is…
The critical incompatibility of polymers with different compositions scales inversely with their length. For instance, a mixture of A and B homopolymers of length $N$ segregates at $\chi_{AB}^{cr} = 2/N$. But what if the difference between…
Complexation of a long flexible polyelectrolyte (PE) molecule with oppositely charged spherical particles such as colloids, micelles, or globular proteins in a salty water solution is studied. PE binds spheres winding around them, while…
We study the effective interaction between differently charged polyelectrolyte-colloid complexes in electrolyte solutions via Monte Carlo simulations. These complexes are formed when short and flexible polyelectrolyte chains adsorb onto…
Coarsening, the process where larger structures grow at the expense of smaller ones, is a fundamental aspect of multiphase systems. The cell cytoplasm exemplifies an out-of-equilibrium multiphase system, where phase-separated condensates…
Electrophoretic (EP) mobility reversal is commonly observed for strongly charged macromolecules in multivalent salt solutions. This curious effect takes place, e.g., when a charged polymer, such as DNA, adsorbs excess counterions so that…
We introduce a generalized non-uniform mean-field formalism to describe the dissociation of weak rod-like polyelectrolytes (PEs). Our approach allows for two-sublattice symmetry breaking which in titration curves is associated with a…
Complexation in symmetric solutions of oppositely charged polyelectrolytes is studied theoretically. We include polyion crosslinking due to formation of thermoreversible ionic pairs. The electrostatic free energy is calculated within the…
The structure of polyelectrolytes is highly sensitive to small changes in the interactions between its monomers. In particular, interactions mediated by counterions play a significant role, and are affected by both specific molecular…
In this paper, we study electrostatic properties between two similar or oppositely charged surfaces immersed in an electrolyte solution by using mean-field approach accounting for solvent polarization and non-uniform size effect. Applying a…
The dissociation of excited electron-hole pairs is a microscopic process that is fundamental to the performance of photovoltaic systems. For this process to be successful, the oppositely charged electron and hole must overcome an…
Droplet coalescence is ubiquitous in nature and the same time key to various technologies, such as inkjet printing. Here, we report on the coalescence of polymer droplets with different chain lengths coalescing on substrates of different…
We calculate the leading Coulomb correction to the energy loss in the electron-nucleus Bremsstrahlung for arbitrary energy of the incoming particle. This correction determines the charge asymmetry, i.e., the difference of electron and…