Related papers: Osmotic Pressure and Swelling Behavior of Ionic Mi…
Microgels made of poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) are the prototype of soft, thermoresponsive particles widely used to study fundamental problems in condensed matter physics. However, their internal structure is far from homogeneous, and…
Cholesteric liquid crystals can exhibit spatial patterns in molecular alignment at interfaces that can be exploited for particle assembly. These patterns emerge from the competition between bulk and surface energies, tunable with the system…
We study the deformations of pH-responsive spherical microcapsules -- micrometer-scale liquid drops surrounded by thin, solid shells -- under the influence of electrostatic forces. When exposed to a large concentration of NaOH, the…
Hydrogels are particularly versatile materials that are widely found in both Nature and industry. One key reason for this versatility is their high water content, which lets them dramatically change their volume and many of their mechanical…
The efficacy of cryopreservation is constrained by the difficulty of achieving sufficiently high intracellular concentrations of cryoprotective solutes without inducing osmotic injury or chemical toxicity during loading. This thermodynamic…
Osmosis plays a central role in the function of living and soft matter systems. While the thermodynamics of osmosis is well understood, the underlying microscopic dynamical mechanisms remain the subject of discussion. Unraveling these…
We present an experimentally guided, bi-phasic, multi-species ionic gel model to compare and make quantitative predictions on the viscoelastic properties of healthy mucus versus Cystic-Fibrosis infected mucus. The mixture theory consists of…
Interpenetrated Polymer Network (IPN) microgels of PNIPAM and PAAc have been investigated and the experimental data have been compared with theoretical models from the Flory-Rehner theory. We confirm that the swelling behavior of PNIPAM…
In this paper we develop a simple theory to study the effects of ionic size on ionic distributions around a charged spherical particle. We include a correction to the regular Poisson-Boltzmann equation in order to take into account the size…
Thermoresponsive microgels are one of the most investigated class of soft colloids, thanks to their ability to undergo a Volume Phase Transition (VPT) close to ambient temperature. However, this fundamental phenomenon still lacks a detailed…
The challenging question on possible plasmon type excitations in finite ionic systems is discussed. The related theoretical model is formulated and developed in order to describe surface and volume plasmons of ion liquid in finite…
When a gel absorbs solvent from surrounding, stress field is created in the gel, and this causes complex dynamics of the swelling behavior. Here we study this effect for disk-shaped gel by rigorously solving the diffusio-mechanical coupling…
In the technique of microrheology, macroscopic rheological parameters as well as information about local structure are deduced from the behavior of microscopic probe particles under thermal or active forcing. Microrheology requires…
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…
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…
We assemble charged colloidal spheres at deliberately chosen locations on a charged unstructured glass substrate utilizing ion exchange based electro-osmotic micro-pumps. Using microscopy, a simple scaling theory and Brownian Dynamics…
Cells and other soft particles are often forced to flow in confined geometries in both laboratory and natural environments, where the elastic deformation induces an additional drag and pressure drop across the particle. In contrast with…
We develop a clear theoretical description of radial swelling in virus-like particles which delineates the importance of electrostatic contributions to swelling in absence of any conformational changes. The model couples the elastic…
Viruses are known to tolerate wide ranges of pH and salt conditions and to withstand internal pressures as high as 100 atmospheres. In this paper we investigate the mechanical properties of viral capsids, calling explicit attention to the…
In the absence of coalescence, coarsening of emulsions (and foams) is controlled by molecular diffusion of dispersed phase between droplets/bubbles. Studies of dilute emulsions have shown how the osmotic pressure of a trapped species within…