Related papers: Dilute gel networks vs. clumpy gels in colloid-pol…
Equilibrium gels of colloidal particles can be realized through the introduction of a second species, a linker that mediates the bonds between the colloids. A gel forming binary mixture whose linkers can self-assemble into linear chains…
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,…
A diffusion process on complex networks is introduced in order to uncover their large scale topological structures. This is achieved by focusing on the slowest decaying diffusive modes of the network. The proposed procedure is applied to…
Colloidal gels are out-of-equilibrium structures, made up of a rarefied network of colloidal particles. Comparing experiments to numerical simulations, with hydrodynamic interactions switched off, we demonstrate the crucial role of the…
Colloidal gels consist of percolating networks of interconnected arms. Their mechanical properties depend on the individual arms, and on their collective behaviour. We use numerical simulations to pull on a single arm, built from a model…
We consider a microscopic model of a polymer blend that is prone to phase separation. Permanent crosslinks are introduced between randomly chosen pairs of monomers, drawn from the Deam-Edwards distribution. Thereby, not only density but…
We investigate the chemical dissolution of porous media using a network model in which the system is represented as a series of interconnected pipes with the diameter of each segment increasing in proportion to the local reactant…
The elastic properties of a soft matter material can be greatly altered by the presence of solid inclusions whose microscopic properties, such as their size and interactions, can have a dramatic effect. In order to shed light on these…
We show by means of continuum theory and simulations that geometric percolation in uniaxial nematics of hard slender particles is fundamentally different from that in isotropic dispersions. In the nematic, percolation depends only very…
Gels in soft-matter systems are an important nonergodic state of matter. We study a colloid-polymer mixture which is quenched by increasing the polymer concentration, from a fluid to a gel. Using confocal microscopy, we study both the…
Soft matters whose constituents are deformable are ubiquitous in nature especially in biological systems-including cells and their organelles-as well as in foams and emulsions. The capacity for deformation in these soft materials gives rise…
Hydrogels have had a profound impact in the fields of tissue engineering, drug delivery, and materials science as a whole. Due to the network architecture of these materials, imbibement with water often results in uniform swelling and…
The function of a real network depends not only on the reliability of its own components, but is affected also by the simultaneous operation of other real networks coupled with it. Robustness of systems composed of interdependent network…
Large-scale coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations of inhomogeneous gel networks were performed to investigate abnormal butterfly patterns in two-dimensional scattering. The networks were diamond lattice-based with distributions in…
We discuss a class of models for particulate gels in which the particle contacts are described by an effective interaction combining a two-body attraction and a three-body angular repulsion. Using molecular dynamics, we show how varying the…
The diffusion of molecules (penetrants) of variable size, shape, and chemistry through dense crosslinked polymer networks is a fundamental scientific problem that is broadly relevant in materials, polymer, physical and biological chemistry.…
Molecular dynamics simulations have been employed to study the formation of a physical (thermoreversible) gel by amphiphilic A-B-A triblock copolymers in aqueous solution. In order to mimic the structure of hydrogel-forming polypeptides…
We study a two-component model for gelation consisting of $f$-functional monomers (the gel) and inert particles (the solvent). After equilibration as a simple liquid, the gel particles are gradually crosslinked to each other until the…
In many real network systems, nodes usually cooperate with each other and form groups, in order to enhance their robustness to risks. This motivates us to study a new type of percolation, group percolation, in interdependent networks under…
Viscoelastic and thermodynamic properties of transient gels formed by telechelic polymers are studied on the basis of the transient network theory that takes account of the correlation among polymer chains via network junctions. The global…