Related papers: Entropic Cohesion in Vitrimers
By means of contact-density chain-growth simulations, we investigate a simple lattice model of a flexible polymer interacting with an attractive substrate. The contact density is a function of the numbers of monomer-substrate and…
The relationship between polymer topology and bulk rheology remains a key question in soft matter physics. Architecture-specific constraints (or threadings) are thought to control the dynamics of ring polymers in ring-linear blends, which…
The stretchability of polymeric materials is critical to many applications such as stretchable electronics and soft robotics, yet the stretchability of conventional cross-linked linear polymers is limited by the entanglements between…
Droplet coalescence is ubiquitous in nature and the same time key to various technologies, such as inkjet printing. Here, we report on the coalescence of polymer droplets with different chain lengths coalescing on substrates of different…
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,…
Some recent results on the rotational dynamics of polymers are reviewed and extended. We focus here on the relaxation of a polymer, either flexible or semiflexible, initially wrapped around a rigid rod. We also study the steady polymer…
The interaction of vortical structures with boundaries has been extensively studied in Newtonian fluids, where conditions such as no slip walls, free surfaces, or contaminated surfaces dictate whether vortices rebound, dissipate, or…
Limited-valency colloidal particles can self-assemble into polymeric structures analogous to molecules. While their structural equilibrium properties have attracted wide attention, insight into their dynamics has proven challenging. Here,…
Blends of polymers of different topologies, such as ring and supercoiled, naturally occur in biology and often exhibit emergent viscoelastic properties coveted in industry. However, due to their complexity, along with the difficulty of…
Vitrimer is a new, exciting class of sustainable polymers with the ability to heal due to their dynamic covalent adaptive network that can go through associative rearrangement reactions. However, a limited choice of constituent molecules…
Motivated by the organization of crosslinked cytoskeletal biopolymers, we present a semimicroscopic replica field theory for the formation of anisotropic random networks of semiflexible polymers. The networks are formed by introducing…
We study the rotational dynamics of a flexible polymer initially wrapped around a rigid rod and unwinding from it. This dynamics is of interest in several problems in biology and constitutes a fundamental instance of polymer relaxation from…
Entangled networks of stiff biopolymers exhibit complex dynamic response, emerging from the topological constraints that neighboring filaments impose upon each other. We propose a class of reference models for entanglement dynamics of stiff…
The behavior of mobile linkers connecting two semi-flexible charged polymers, such as polyvalent counterions connecting DNA or F-actin chains, is studied theoretically. The chain bending rigidity induces an effective repulsion between…
We predict the thermodynamic and structural behavior of solutions of long cross-linked filaments. We find that at the mean field level, the entropy of self-assembled junctions induces an effective attraction between the filaments that can…
Cross-linked polymer networks with orientational order constitute a wide class of soft materials and are relevant to biological systems (e.g., F-actin bundles). We analytically study the nonlinear force-extension relation of an array of…
We report extensive numerical simulations of different models of 2D polymer rings with internal elasticity. We monitor the dynamical behavior of the rings as a function of the packing fraction, to address the effects of particle deformation…
Polymer entanglements lead to complicated topological constraints and interactions between neighbouring chains in a dense solution or melt. Entanglements can be treated in a mean field approach, within the famous reptation model, since they…
Hydrogels are soft materials engineered to suit a multitude of applications that exploit their tunable mechanochemical properties. Dynamic hydrogels employing noncovalent, physically crosslinked networks dominated by either enthalpic or…
The impact of complex media on the dynamics of active swimmers has gained a thriving interest in the research community for their prominent applications in various fields. This paper investigates the effect of viscoelasticity on the…