Related papers: Packing, Phase Separation and Interface Compatibil…
Polymer chains decorated with a fraction of monomers capable of forming reversible bonds form transient polymer networks that are important in soft and biological systems. If chains are flexible and the attractive monomers are all of the…
Previous studies have shown that the interiors of proteins are densely packed, reaching packing fractions that are as large as those found for static packings of individual amino-acid-shaped particles. How can the interiors of proteins take…
We present simulations on a binary blend of bead-spring polymer chains. The introduction of monomer size disparity yields very different relaxation times for each component of the blend. Competition between two different arrest mechanisms,…
Polymer-based batteries offer potentially higher power densities and a smaller ecological footprint compared to state-of-the-art lithium-ion batteries comprising inorganic active materials. However, in order to benefit from this potential…
Polymer models are used to describe chromatin, which can be folded at different spatial scales by binding molecules. By folding, chromatin generates loops of various sizes. We present here a randomly cross-linked (RCL) polymer model, where…
We study the partition functions associated with non-intersecting polymers in a random environment. By considering paths in series and in parallel, the partition functions carry natural notions of subadditivity, allowing the effective study…
Polymer melts with chains undergoing reversible crosslinking have distinctively favorable dynamic properties, e.g., self healing and reprocessability. In these situations there are two relevant elementary time scales: the segmental and the…
The cavitation flow of linear-polymer solutions around a cylinder is studied by performing a large-scale molecular dynamics simulation. The addition of polymer chains remarkably suppresses the cavitation. The polymers are stretched into a…
Particle dampers represent a simple yet effective means to reduce unwanted oscillations when attached to structural components. Powder bed fusion additive manufacturing of metals allows to integrate particle inclusions of arbitrary shape,…
Using molecular dynamics simulations, we investigate the aggregation behavior of neutral stiff (rod-like) and flexible polymer chains mediated by attractive crowders. Attractive crowders serve as bridging agents, inducing aggregation…
Two ring polymers close to each other in space may be either in a segregated phase if there is a strong repulsion between monomers in the polymers, or intermingle in a mixed phase if there is a strong attractive force between the monomers.…
Much work has studied effective interactions between micron-sized particles carrying linkers forming reversible, inter-particle linkages. These studies allowed understanding the equilibrium properties of colloids interacting through…
The properties of semiflexible polymers tethered by one end to an impenetrable wall and exposed to oscillatory shear flow are investigated by mesoscale simulations. A polymer, confined in two dimensions, is described by a linear bead-spring…
Polymer gels with photo-responsive cross-links enable tunable mechanics and surface morphologies, making them promising for adaptive materials. While prior work on coumarin cross-linked gels has focused on photo-mediated events in dilute…
The critical incompatibility of polymers with different compositions scales inversely with their length. For instance, a mixture of A and B homopolymers of length $N$ segregates at $\chi_{AB}^{cr} = 2/N$. But what if the difference between…
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…
Although polymerization and curing reactions govern the performance of advanced materials, their simulation remains challenging owing to the need for accurate, transferable potentials and rarity of chemical events. Conventional reactive…
Constitutive equations are derived for the time-dependent behavior of particle-reinforced elastomers at isothermal loading with finite strains. A rubbery polymer is modelled as a network of macromolecules bridged by junctions which can slip…
Letting free polymers diffuse from solution into a crosslinked polymer gel is often a crucial processing step in the synthesis of multiphase polymer-based gels, e.g., core-shell microgels. Here we use coarse-grained molecular dynamics…
Associative polymer networks have shown a major promise in fabrication of self-healing and responsive materials. The can also serve as simple models to study more complex biological systems where transient interactions play an important…