Related papers: Understanding Polymer-Colloid Gels: A Solvent Pers…
The inner structure of polymeric particles critically influences their phase behavior and functionality, governing their mechanical properties and their physical and chemical interactions. For thermoresponsive microgels, i.e. colloidal…
A key objective in DNA-based material science is understanding and precisely controlling the mechanical properties of DNA hydrogels. We perform microrheology measurements using diffusing-wave spectroscopy (DWS) to investigate the…
We address the problem of inverse polymer swelling. This phenomenon, in which a collapsed polymer chain swells upon decreasing temperature, can be observed experimentally in so-called thermoreversible homopolymers in aqueous solution, and…
Real-time probing of electrons can uncover intricate relaxation mechanisms and many-body interactions hidden in strongly correlated materials. While experimenters have used ultrafast optical pump-probe methods in bulk materials, laser…
The high-energy tail of the distribution of solute-solvent interaction energies is poorly characterized for condensed systems, but this tail region is of principal interest in determining the excess free energy of the solute. We introduce…
We consider a model dense colloidal dispersion at the glass transition, and investigate the connection between equilibrium stress fluctuations, seen in linear shear moduli, and the shear stresses under strong flow conditions far from…
We present a system developed to premagnetize liquid samples in an ultra-low-field Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) experiment. Liquid samples of a few milliliter are exposed to a magnetic field of about 70~mT, which is abruptely switched…
Colloidal gels, where nanoscale particles aggregate into an elastic yet fragile network, are at the heart of materials that combine specific optical, electrical and mechanical properties. Tailoring the viscoelastic features of colloidal…
Understanding how soft matter systems, including biological ones, can develop collective electromagnetic phenomena under external fields at ambient conditions remains a central challenge, as thermal fluctuations are generally expected to…
From biological tissues to layers of paint, macroscopic non-porous materials with the capacity to swell when brought in contact with an appropriate solvent are ubiquitous. Here, we study experimentally and theoretically one of the…
We study the swelling and shrinking behavior of core-shell microgels adsorbed on silicon wafers. In these systems, the core is made of cross-linked poly(N isopropylmethacrylamide) and the shell consists of cross linked poly(N-n…
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…
The time-dependent stress relaxation for a Rouse model of a crosslinked polymer melt is completely determined by the spectrum of eigenvalues of the connectivity matrix. The latter has been computed analytically for a mean-field distribution…
Stimuli-responsive lyogels are considered to be smart materials due to their capability of undergoing significant macroscopic changes in response to external triggers. Due to their versatile and unique properties, smart lyogels exhibit…
Machine learning offers promising tools to develop surrogate models for polymer structure-property relations. Surrogate models can be built upon existing polymer data and are useful for rapidly predicting the properties of unknown polymers.…
A theoretical framework is presented which allows to quantitatively predict the final stationary state achieved by a non-neutral plasma during a process of collisionless relaxation. As a specific application, the theory is used to study…
Stimulus-induced volumetric phase transition in gels may be potentially exploited for various bio-engineering and mechanical engineering applications. Since the discovery of the phenomenon in the 1970s, extensive experimental research has…
We develop computational methods that incorporate shear into fluctuating hydrodynamics methods. We are motivated by the rheological responses of complex fluids and soft materials. Our approach is based on continuum stochastic hydrodynamic…
The growing interest in the dynamical properties of colloidal suspensions, both in equilibrium and under an external drive such as shear or pressure flow, requires the development of accurate methods to correctly include hydrodynamic…
Governing equations are derived for the kinetics of physical aging in polymeric glasses. An amorphous polymer is treated as an ensemble of cooperatively rearranged regions (CRR). Any CRR is thought of as a string of elementary clusters…