Related papers: How Soft is Too Soft? Tuning Order and Disorder in…
Assemblies of purely repulsive and frictionless particles, such as emulsions or hard spheres, display very curious properties near their jamming transition, which occurs at the random close packing for mono-disperse spheres. Although such…
We study the equilibrium and nonequilibrium formation of four-particle complexes in a balanced two-species Bose-Hubbard model with repulsive intra- and attractive inter-species interactions. Using exact diagonalization, we characterize the…
Conformational transitions of flexible molecules, especially those driven by hydrophobic effects, tend to be hindered by desolvation barriers. For such transitions, it is thus important to characterize and understand the interplay between…
Curved particles have been shown to stabilize a range of states with unique order in dense suspensions of colloidal bent core liquid crystals. The shape of the colloidal rods encourages the formation of curved director fields. However,…
We map out the solid-state morphologies formed by model soft-pearl-necklace polymers as a function of bending stiffness $k_b$ spanning the range from fully flexible to rodlike chains. The ratio of Kuhn length to bead diameter ($l_K/r_0$)…
Amorphous materials as diverse as foams, emulsions, colloidal suspensions and granular media can {\em jam} into a rigid, disordered state where they withstand finite shear stresses before yielding. The jamming transition has been studied…
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…
Through extensive Monte Carlo simulations, we systematically study the effect of chain stiffness on the packing ability of linear polymers composed of hard spheres in extremely confined monolayers, corresponding effectively to 2D films.…
Apart from not having crystallized, supercooled liquids can be considered as being properly equilibrated and thus can be described by a few thermodynamic control variables. In contrast, glasses and other amorphous solids can be arbitrarily…
Friction between ordered, atomically smooth surfaces at the nanoscale (nanofriction) is often governed by stick-slip processes. To test long-standing atomistic models of such processes, we implement a synthetic nanofriction interface…
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…
Understanding how interparticle interactions govern phase behavior is central to controlling self-organization in multicomponent soft-matter systems. In particular, the role of cross-interactions between unlike components remains…
We study a model of flexible block copolymers (BCPs) in which there is an enlthalpic preference for local alignment, among like-block segments. We describe a generalization of the self-consistent field theory (SCFT) of flexible BCPs to…
The intermittent transition between slow growth and rapid shrinkage in polymeric assemblies is termed dynamic instability, a feature observed in a variety of biochemically distinct assemblies including microtubules, actin and their…
Using Langevin dynamics complemented by Wang-Landau Monte Carlo simulations, we study the phase behavior of single and multiple semiflexible polymer chains in solution under poor-solvent conditions. In the case of a single chain, we obtain…
In a similar way in which the folding of single--domain proteins provide an important test in the study of self--organization, the folding of homodimers constitute a basic challenge in the quest for the mechanisms which are at the basis of…
Systems of soft-core particles interacting via a two-scale potential are studied. The potential is responsible for peaks in the structure factor of the liquid state at two different but comparable length scales, and a similar bimodal…
Soft adhesive contacts are ubiquitous in nature and are increasingly used in synthetic systems, such as flexible electronics and soft robots, due to their advantages over traditional joining techniques. While methods to study the failure of…
Using molecular dynamics we investigate the thermodynamics, dynamics and structure of 250 diatomic molecules interacting by a core-softened potential. This system exhibits thermodynamics, dynamics and structural anomalies: a maximum in…
Flexibility governs the many properties of materials and is crucial for the function of proteins and biopolymers. However, how the self-assembly of flexibly bonded particles can lead to larger structures with global reconfigurability is…