Related papers: Sieving and clogging in PEG-PEGDA hydrogel membran…
Thermoresponsive microgels find widespread use as colloidal model systems, because their temperature-dependent size allows facile tuning of their volume fraction "in situ". However, an interaction potential unifying their behavior across…
Past work has shown that ions can pass through a membrane more readily in one direction than the other. We demonstrate here in a model and an experiment that for a mixture of small and large particles such asymmetric diffusion can arise…
A polymer/liquid crystal-based fiber Bragg grating (PLC-FBG) is fabricated with visible two-beam holography by photo-induced modulation of a pre-polymer/LC solution infiltrated into the hollow channels of a solid core photonic crystal fiber…
Polymer microgels exhibit intriguing macroscopic flow properties arising from their unique microscopic structure. Microgel colloids usually comprise a crosslinked polymer network with a radially decaying density profile, resulting in a…
Traditional self-assembly methods often rely on densely packed colloidal crystalline structures and have inherent limitations in generating materials with isotropic photonic bandgaps (PBG). This study explores the photonic properties of…
Subjected to compressive stresses, soft polymers with stiffness gradients can display various buckling patterns. These compressive stresses can have different origins, like mechanical forces, temperature changes, or, for hydrogel materials,…
To probe the effects of hydrogel particle additives on the water-accessible pore structure of sandy soils, we introduce a custom pressure plate method in which the volume of water expelled from a wet granular packing is measured as a…
The dynamics of dense particle packings near the jamming transition is characterized by correlated particle motion. The growth of dynamical heterogeneities, or strong spatial variations in the motion of the particles constituting the…
Palladium hydride is a model system for studying metal-hydrogen interactions. Yet, its bulk electronic structure has proven difficult to directly probe, with most studies to date limited to surface-sensitive photoelectron spectroscopy…
In a recent publication, we have highlighted the potential of phosphonic acid terminated PEG oligomers to functionalize strong UV absorption cerium oxide nanoparticles[1], which yield suspensions that are stable in aqueous or organic…
From pasta to biological tissues to contact lenses, gel and gel-like materials inherently soften as they swell with water. In dry, low-relative-humidity environments, these materials stiffen as they de-swell with water. Here, we use…
The transport of particles across lipid-bilayer membranes is important for biological cells to exchange information and material with their environment. Large particles often get wrapped by membranes, a process which has been intensively…
In this work the systems composed of particles interacting with hard potential are investigated. These systems feature certain modifications to the crystal structure - selected particles are replaced with ones that differ slightly in their…
Using fluorescence microscopy we study the adsorption of single latex microparticles at a water/water interface between demixing aqueous solutions of polymers, generally known as a water-in-water emulsion. Similar microparticles at the…
The interface of a soft hydrogel is easily deformed when it is in contact with particles, droplets or cells. Here we compute the intricate shapes of hydrogel menisci due to the indentation of point particles. The analysis is based on a free…
Addition of particles to a viscoelastic suspension dramatically alters the properties of the mixture, particularly when it is sheared or otherwise processed. Shear-induced stretching of the polymers results in elastic stress that causes a…
We have studied the pearling instability induced on hollow tubular lipid vesicles by hydrophilic polymers with hydrophobic side groups along the backbone. The results show that the polymer concentration is coupled to local membrane…
Liquid mixtures composed of colloidal particles and much smaller non-adsorbing linear homopolymers can undergo a gelation transition due to polymer-mediated depletion forces. We now show that the addition of linear polymers to suspensions…
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.…
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…