Related papers: Liquid-liquid phase separation driven by charge he…
Recently synthesized colloids and biological systems such as proteins, viruses and monoclonal antibodies are heterogeneously charged, i.e., different regions of their surfaces carry different amount of positive or negative charge. Because…
The ion-activated patchy particle model is an important theoretical framework to investigate the phase behaviour of globular proteins in the presence of multivalent ions. In this work, we study and highlight the influence of patch…
The liquid-gas transition of an electroneutral mixture of oppositely charged colloids, studied by Monte Carlo simulations, is found in the low temperature -- low density region. The critical temperature shows a non-monotonous behavior as a…
We study the thermodynamic behavior of nonpolar liquid mixtures in the vicinity of curved charged objects, such as electrodes or charged colloids. For small enough charge on the object, or equivalently, small potential, the…
We develop a thermodynamic description of particles held at a fixed surface potential. This system is of particular interest in view of the continuing controversy over the possibility of a fluid-fluid phase separation in aqueous colloidal…
The phase behavior of membrane proteins stems from a complex synergy with the amphiphilic molecules required for their solubilization. We show that ionization of a pH-sensitive surfactant, LDAO, bound to a bacterial photosynthetic protein,…
Liquid-liquid phase separation has emerged as a fundamental mechanism underlying intracellular organization, with evidence for it being reported in numerous different systems. However, there is a growing concern regarding the lack of…
Spatially uniform electric fields have been used to induce instabilities in liquids and polymers, and to orient and deform ordered phases of block-copolymers. Here we discuss the demixing phase transition occurring in liquid mixtures when…
The equilibrium phase behaviour of hard spheres with size polydispersity is studied theoretically. We solve numerically the exact phase equilibrium equations that result from accurate free energy expressions for the fluid and solid phases,…
Liquid-liquid phase separation is ubiquitous in suspensions of nanoparticles, proteins and colloids. With a few notable exceptions, surface-tension-minimizing liquid droplets in bulk suspensions continuously coalesce, increasing in size…
The phase behavior of colloid-polymer mixtures, and of solutions of globular proteins, is often interpreted in terms of a simple model of hard spheres with short-ranged attraction. While such a model yields a qualitative understanding of…
In view of the notorious complexity of protein--protein interactions, simplified models of proteins treated as patchy particles offer a promising strategy to obtain insight into the mechanism of crystallization. Here we report…
A new type of phase separation in the polyelectrolyte solutions consisting of several types of charged macromolecules differing in their degree of ionization is predicted via a general thermodynamic consideration. We show that even a small…
We explore the effects of counterion condensation on fluid-fluid phase separation in charged colloidal suspensions. It is found that formation of double layers around the colloidal particles stabilizes suspensions against phase separation.…
We report that binary dispersions of like-charged colloidal particles with large charge asymmetry but similar size exhibit phase separation into crystal and fluid phases under very low salt conditions. This is unexpected because the…
We propose a framework to study the spatio-temporal evolution of liquid-liquid phase separation of weak polyelectrolytes in ionic solutions. Unlike strong polyelectrolytes, which carry a fixed charge, the charge state of weak…
Kinetics of phase separation in a three dimensional single-component Lennard-Jones fluid, that exhibits vapor-liquid transition, is studied via molecular dynamics simulations after quenching homogeneous systems, of different overall…
A recent study has demonstrated that phase separation in binary liquid mixtures is arrested in the presence of elastic networks and can lead to a nearly uniformly-sized distribution of the dilute-phase droplets. At longer timescales, these…
Liquid-liquid phase separation has emerged as one of the important paradigms in the chemical physics as well as biophysics of charged macromolecular systems. We elucidate an equilibrium phase separation mechanism based on charge regulation,…
When a liquid mixture is subjected to external electric fields, ionic screening leads to field gradients. We point out that if the mixture is initially in the homogeneous phase, this screening can bring about a robust phase-separation…