Related papers: Thermoresponsive copolymer microgels synthesized v…
Microgels are soft microparticles that often exhibit thermoresponsiveness and feature a transformation at a critical temperature, referred to as the volume phase transition temperature. The question of whether this transformation occurs as…
Star polymers with magnetically functionalized end groups are presented as a novel polymeric system whose morphology, self-aggregation, and orientation can easily be tuned by exposing these macromolecules simultaneously to an external…
The fabrication of versatile building blocks that are reliably self-assemble into desired ordered and disordered phases is amongst the hottest topics in contemporary material science. To this end, microscopic units of varying complexity,…
We explore the impact of three water-soluble polyelectrolytes (PEs) on the flow of concentrated suspensions of poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAm) microgels with thermoresponsive anionic charge density. By progressively adding the PEs to a…
During the last 3 years, our group has investigated extensively the complexation mechanism between neutral-polyelectrolyte block copolymers with oppositely charged species. These species are surfactant micelles, multivalent counterions and…
Nanoplatelets open up a wide range of possibilities for building materials with novel properties linked to their shape anisotropy. A challenge consists of controlling dynamically the order of positioning and orientation in three dimensions…
The crystallisation of entangled polymers from their melt is investigated using computer simulation with a coarse-grained model. Using hybrid Monte Carlo simulations enables us to probe the behaviour of long polymer chains. We identify…
{We study in some details the statistical properties of the turbulent 2-phase interstellar atomic gas.{We present high resolution bidimensional numerical simulations of the interstellar atomic hydrogen which describe it over 3 to 4 orders…
We consider a functional surface comprising thermoresponsive polymer chains, the material that has found numerous technological and biomedical applications. However, to achieve the required time and length scales for computer modelling of…
We report on the structural properties of mixed aggregates made from rare-earth inorganic nanoparticles (radius 20 Angstroms) and polyelectrolyte-neutral block copolymers in aqueous solutions. Using scattering experiments and Monte Carlo…
We examine the phase transition of polymer adsorption as well as the underlying kinetics of polymer binding from dilute solutions on a structureless solid surface. The emphasis is put on the properties of regular multiblock copolymers,…
Polymer blends consisting of two or more polymers are important for a wide variety of industries and processes, but, the precise mechanism of their thermomechanical behaviour is incompletely understood. In order to understand clearly, it is…
Isoporous membranes made from diblock copolymers have numerous applications, including water treatment and protein separation, and are successfully produced at a laboratory scale under controlled conditions. However, achieving optimal…
The phase behaviour of soft colloids has attracted great attention due to the large variety of new phenomenologies emerging from their ability to pack at very high volume fractions. Here we report rheological measurements on interpenetrated…
Polymer blends offer an exciting material for various potential applications due to their tunable properties by varying constituting components and their relative composition. Our simulation results unravel an intrinsic relationship between…
Creating materials with structure that is independently controllable at a range of scales requires breaking naturally occurring hierarchies. Breaking these hierarchies can be achieved via the decoupling of building block attributes from…
Controlled crystallization, melting and vitrification are important fundamental processes in nature and technology. However, the microscopic details of these fundamental phenomena still lack understanding, in particular how the cooling rate…
The glass transition is a long-standing unsolved problem in materials science. For polymers, our understanding of glass-formation is particularly poor due to the added complexity of chain connectivity and flexibility; structural relaxation…
Block copolymers often create droplets when placed on a substrate. Such nanostructured droplets can be arranged into regular microstructured arrays, thereby forming hierarchically organized materials that can be used in microelectronics,…
Microcapsules allow for the controlled containment, transport, and release of cargoes ranging from pharmaceuticals to fragrances. Given the interest from a variety of industries in microcapsules and other core-shell structures, a multitude…