Related papers: Sieving and clogging in PEG-PEGDA hydrogel membran…
In studies of the dynamic failure of brittle hydrogels, a bound has been placed on the process zone scale - the scale where material separation and ultimate failure occur. For the polyacrylamide hydrogel system under study, this bound is…
Wet particle separation is widely used in mineral processing and plastic recycling to separate mixtures of particulate materials into further usable fractions due to density differences. This work presents efforts aiming to numerically…
It is established that the mechanical properties of hydrogels control the fate of (stem) cells. However, despite its importance, a one-to-one correspondence between gels' stiffness and cell behaviour is still missing from literature. In…
A series of amphiphilic LC block copolymers, in which the hydrophobic block is a smectic polymer poly(4-methoxyphenyl 4-(6-acryloyloxy-hexyloxy)-benzoate) (PA6ester1) and the hydrophilic block is polyethyleneglycol (PEG), were synthesized…
Being able to precisely characterize the mechanical properties of soft microparticles is essential for numerous situations from the understanding of the flow of biological fluids to the development of soft micro-robots. Here we present a…
Microgels are elastic and deformable particles with a hybrid nature between that of polymers and colloids and unconventional behaviours with respect to hard colloids. We investigated the dynamics of a soft microgel made of interpenetrated…
Soft nanoparticles hold promise as smart emulsifiers due to their high degree of deformability, permeability and stimuli responsive properties. By means of large-scale simulations we investigate the structural properties of nanogels at…
Control of the swelling, chemical functionalization, and adhesivity of hydrogels are finding new applications in a wide range of material systems. We investigate experimentally the effect of adsorbed particles on hydrogels on the depinning…
The industrial implementation of biofuel production from lignocellulosic biomass faces a number of economic obstacles. One of these is the cost of enzymes, typically used for cellulose hydrolysis. Nature provides some hints towards the…
We measure the flow of water through mixed packings of glass spheres and soft swellable hydrogel grains, at constant sample volume. Permeability values are obtained at constant sample volume and at porosities smaller than random close…
Differential shrinkage in particulate quasi-brittle materials causes microcracking which reduces durability in these materials by increasing their mass transport properties. A hydro-mechanical three-dimensional periodic network approach was…
We use a recently developed lattice model to study the percolation of particles of different sizes and shapes in the presence of a polymer matrix. The polymer is modeled as an infinitely long semiflexible chain. We study the effects of the…
We report, for the first time, some experimental observations regarding a new type of long range interaction between rigid particles that prevails when they are suspended in an soft elastic gel. A denser particle submerges itself to a…
Synthetic Laponite-clay particles with platelet-like shape display strong aging when dispersed in aqueous solutions, preventing latter from reaching their natural liquid-crystalline equilibrium state. Here we introduce a facile method that…
Hydrogen is one of the prime candidates for clean energy source with high energy density. However, current industrial methods of hydrogen production are difficult to provide hydrogen with high purity, thus hard to meet the requirements in…
Microgels are colloidal-scale particles individually made of crosslinked polymer networks that can swell and deswell in response to external stimuli, such as changes to temperature or pH. Despite a large amount of experimental activities on…
We use dedicated microfluidic devices to expose soft hydrogel particles to a rapid change in the externally applied osmotic pressure and observe a non-monotonic response: After an initial rapid compression the particle slowly reswells to…
Fundamental understanding of the effect of microscopic parameters on the dynamics of probe particles in different complex environments has wide implications. Examples include diffusion of proteins in the biological hydrogels, porous media,…
This article presents a novel computational model to study the selective filtering of biological hydrogels due to the surface charge and size of diffusing particles. It is the first model that includes the random 3D fiber orientation and…
Metal hydrides are critical materials in numerous technologies including hydrogen storage, gas separation, and electrocatalysis. Here, using Pd-H as a model metal hydride, we perform electrochemical insertion studies of hydrogen via liquid…