Related papers: Selective colloid transport across planar polymer …
A coarse grained model for flexible polymers end-grafted to repulsive spherical nanoparticles is studied for various chain lengths and grafting densities under good solvent conditions, by Molecular Dynamics methods and density functional…
Designable media can control properties of nanocomposite materials by spatially organizing nanoparticles. Here we theoretically study particle organization by ultrathin polymer films of grafted chains (``brushes''). Polymer-soluble…
Recently a novel class of responsive uncharged polymer brushes has been proposed [Klushin et al, J. Chem. Phys. 154, 074904 (2021)] where the brush-forming chains have an affinity to the substrate. For sufficiently strong surface…
We investigate the effect of mobile polymer brushes on proteins embedded in biological membranes by employing both Asakura-Oosawa type of theoretical model and coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations. The brush polymer-induced…
Solutions of semiflexible polymers confined by repulsive planar walls are studied by density functional theory and Molecular Dynamics simulations, to clarify the competition between the chain alignment favored by the wall and the depletion…
Enhanced colloidal transport beyond the limit imposed by diffusion is usually achieved through external fields. Here, we demonstrate the ballistic transport of a colloidal sphere using internal sources of energy provided by an attached…
Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulations are presented for a coarse-grained bead-spring model of ring polymer brushes under compression. Flexible polymer brushes are always disordered during compression, whereas semiflexible brushes tend to be…
The design of complex materials and the formation of specific patterns often arise from the properties of the individual building blocks. In this respect, colloidal systems offer a unique opportunity because nowadays they can be synthesized…
The influence of poor solvent quality on fluid demixing of a model mixture of colloids and nonadsorbing polymers is investigated using density functional theory. The colloidal particles are modelled as hard spheres and the polymer coils as…
We experimentally and theoretically consider highly condensed planar brushes made of charged polymers. Using x-ray reflectivity on polyelectrolytes which are anchored at the water-air interface, it is shown that such strongly stretched…
Using molecular simulations, we study the properties of a polymer brush in contact with an explicit solvent under Couette and Poiseuille flow. The solvent is comprised of chemically identical chains. We present evidence that individual,…
Polymer brush layers are responsive materials that swell in contact with good solvents and their vapors. We deposit drops of an almost completely wetting volatile oil onto an oleophilic polymer brush layer and follow the response of the…
Ordering nanoparticles into a desired super-structure is often crucial for their technological applications. We use molecular dynamics simulations to study the assembly of nanoparticles in a polymer brush randomly grafted to a planar…
Microorganisms are able to overcome the thermal randomness of their surroundings by harvesting energy to navigate in viscous fluid environments. In a similar manner, synthetic colloidal microswimmers are capable of mimicking complex…
The stretching of brushes of long polymers grafted to a planar surface is investigated byMonte Carlo simulations in the limit of very high grafting densities, as achieved in recent experiments. The monomer density profiles are shown to…
Predicting and controlling the transport of colloids in porous media is essential for applications ranging from contaminant remediation to drug delivery. In these complex environments, solute gradients are ubiquitous and could drive…
Using self-consistent field and density-functional theories, we first investigate colloidal self-assembling of colloid/polymer films confined between two soft surfaces grafted by polymers. With the increase of colloidal concentrations, the…
Motivated by experiments in which a polynucleotide is driven through a proteinaceous pore by an electric field, we study the diffusive motion of a polymer threaded through a narrow channel with which it may have strong interactions. We show…
This paper adopts a previously developed activation model of shear thickening, published by the authors, to sterically stabilized colloidal suspensions. When particles arranged along the compression axis of a sheared suspension, they may…
Polymer brushes have found extensive applications as responsive surfaces, particularly in achieving tunable friction in solvent environments. Despite recent interest in extending this technology to air environments, little is known about…