Related papers: Theory of Microphase Separation in Elastomers
Elastic microphase separation refers to equilibrium patterns that form by phase separation in elastic gels. Recent experiments revealed a continuous phase transition from the homogeneous phase to a regularly patterned phase, whose period…
Living and engineered systems rely on the stable coexistence of two interspersed liquid phases. Yet surface tension drives their complete separation. Here we show that stable droplets of uniform and tuneable size can be produced through…
Phase separation of a liquid mixture embedded within an elastic network is relevant to a wide range of natural and industrial systems, including biomolecular condensates interacting with the cytoskeleton, structural colouring in bird…
We propose a novel phase-field model to predict elastic microphase separation in polymer gels. To this end, we extend the Cahn-Hilliard free-energy functional to incorporate an elastic strain energy and a coupling term. These contributions…
Elastic interactions arising from a difference of lattice spacing between two coherent phases can have a strong influence on the phase separation (coarsening) of alloys. If the elastic moduli are different in the two phases, the elastic…
Elastic MicroPhase Separation (EMPS) provides a simple route to create soft materials with homogeneous microstructures by leveraging the supersaturation of crosslinked polymer networks with liquids. At low supersaturation, network…
Phase separation within polymer networks plays a central role in shaping the structure and mechanics of both synthetic materials and living cells, including the formation of biomolecular condensates within cytoskeletal networks. Previous…
Whereas entropy can induce phase behavior that is as rich as seen in energetic systems, microphase separation remains a very rare phenomenon in entropic systems. In this paper, we present a density functional approach to study the…
Crystal lattice deformations can be described microscopically by explicitly accounting for the position of atoms or macroscopically by continuum elasticity. In this work, we report on the description of continuous elastic fields derived…
Amorphization during severe plastic deformation has been observed in various crystalline materials, yet its underlying mechanisms remain poorly understood. This study introduces a novel phase-field model at the mesoscale, integrating…
The process of phase separation in elastic solids and viscous fluids is of fundamental importance to the stability and function of soft materials. We explore the dynamics of phase separation and domain growth in a viscoelastic material such…
We compare six elastic models for polymer networks in the context of phase separation within a gel, including a new model that combines the finite extensible Arruda-Boyce model and the slip tube model for entangled chains. We study…
A novel two-leaflet description of lipid membranes is proposed. Within its framework, phase separation phenomena in multicomponent biological membranes are analyzed. As we show, interactions between the leaflets tend to suppress macroscopic…
A consistent, small scale description of plastic motion in a crystalline solid is presented based on a phase field description. By allowing for independent mass motion given by the phase field, and lattice distortion, the solid can remain…
Most of the commercially important alloys are multicomponent, producing multiphase microstructures as a result of processing. When the coexisting phases are elastically coherent, the elastic interactions between these phases play a major…
A new formulation of the Phase Field Crystal model is presented that is consistent with the necessary microscopic independence between the phase field, reflecting the broken symmetry of the phase, and both mass density and elastic…
Microphase separation in random multiblock copolymers is studied with mean-field theory assuming that long blocks of a copolymer are strongly segregated, whereas short blocks are able to penetrate into "alien" domains and exchange between…
We model a melt of monodisperse side-chain liquid crystalline polymers as a melt of comb copolymers in which the side groups are rod-coil diblock copolymers. We consider both excluded volume and Maier-Saupe interactions. The first acts…
We propose a protocol to model accurately the electromechanical behavior of dielectric elastomer membranes using experimental data of stress-stretch and voltage-stretch tests. We show how the relationship between electric displacement and…
The formation of polarized signaling domains on cell membranes is a fundamental example of biological pattern formation. While such patterns resemble structures from equilibrium phase separation, they are intrinsically non-equilibrium,…