Related papers: Nanoconfinement Effects on Intermolecular Forces O…
The advances in new technologies have prompted the need for functional systems smaller than the gyration radius of polymer chains. Thus, understanding how nanoconfinement affects polymer properties has been the focus of a lot of research…
We report on the effect of intermolecular forces on the fluctuations of supported liquid films. Using an optically-induced thermal gradient, we form nanometer-thin films of wetting liquids on glass substrates, where van der Waals forces are…
We use molecular simulations to explore how sample dimensions and interfacial properties impact some generic aspects of the mechanical and structural behavior of nanoconfined materials. Specifically, we calculate the strain-dependent…
Nanoscale polymeric thin films are widely used in diverse applications such as energy devices, flexible electronics and biosensors, where a satisfactory mechanical performance is of vital importance to realize their full functionality. It…
Because final properties of nanoscale polymeric structures are largely determined by the solid-state microstructure of the confined polymer, it is imperative not only to understand how the microstructure of polymers develops under nanoscale…
When a liquid film lies on a non-wettable substrate, the configuration is unstable and the film then retracts from a solid substrate to form droplets. This phenomenon, known as dewetting, commonly leads to undesirable morphological changes.…
We examine the effects of confinement on the dynamics of premelted films driven by thermomolecular pressure gradients. Our approach is to modify a well-studied setting in which the thermomolecular pressure gradient is driven by a…
Reactions at solid-water interfaces play a foundational role in water treatment systems, catalysis, chemical separations, and in predicting chemical fate and transport in the environment. Over the last century, experimental measurements and…
The study of novel 2D platforms implementing magnetism in tunable van der Waals (vdW) homo- and hetero-structures paves the way to innovative spintronics and magnetic devices. In this study, we unravel the intriguing properties of few-layer…
How the geometry of nano-sized confinement affects dynamics of biomaterials is interesting yet poorly understood. An elucidation of structural details upon nano-sized confinement may benefit manufacturing pharmaceuticals in biomaterial…
Physically confining polymers into nanoscale pores induces significant changes in their dynamics. Although different results on the effect of confinement on the dynamics of polymers have been reported, changes in the segmental mobility of…
Adhesion between two surfaces depend on the chemical and the mechanical properties of both the materials. However, heterogeneities (surface or bulk) affect the adhesion between the two surfaces tremendously. In this work, we study the role…
We study how confinement affects topology and conformations in polymer films of varying thickness $h$. The knotting probability exhibits a maximum at intermediate thicknesses near the bulk radius of gyration $h \approx R_\mathrm{g,bulk}$,…
The dewetting of thin nanofilms is significantly impacted by thermal fluctuations, liquid-solid slip, and disjoining pressure, which can be described by lubrication equations augmented by appropriately scaled noise terms, known as…
This paper presents a study of the polymer-filler interfacial effects on filler dispersion and mechanical reinforcement in Polystyrene (PS) / silica nanocomposites by direct comparison of two model systems: un-grafted and PS-grafted silica…
We study the effects of droplet finite size on the structure of nanogel particles synthesized by random crosslinking of molecular polymers diluted in nanoemulsions. For this, we use a bead-spring computer model of polymer-like structures…
We present an experimental investigation of drying suspensions of both hard and soft nanolatex spheres. The crack formation is examined as a function of the proportion of hard and soft deformable particles, leading to tunable elastic…
In capillary-driven fluid dynamics, simple departures from equilibrium offer the chance to quantitatively model the resulting relaxations. These dynamics in turn provide insight on both practical and fundamental aspects of thin-film…
The effect of substrate was studied using nanoindentation on thin films. Soft films on hard substrate showed more pile up than usual which was attributed to the dislocation pile up at the film substrate interface. The effect of tip blunting…
A series of poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) surfaces decorated by Cu nanoparticles (NP) with gradually varied morphology were prepared by high-pressure CO2 treatment at various time spans. Combining the characterizations of transmission…