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We model the behaviour of a single colloid embedded in a cross-linked polymer gel, immersed in a viscous background fluid. External fields actuate the particle into a periodic motion, which deforms the embedding matrix and creates a local…
The macroscopic mechanical properties of colloidal particle gels strongly depend on the local arrangement of the powder particles. Experiments have shown that more heterogeneous microstructures exhibit up to one order of magnitude higher…
Entropic forces in colloidal suspensions and in polymer-colloid systems are of long-standing and continuing interest. Experiments show how entropic forces can be used to control the self-assembly of colloidal particles. Significant advances…
Competing interactions stabilize exotic mesoscopic structures, yet the microscopic mechanisms by which they influence non-equilibrium processes leading to disordered states remain largely unexplored, despite their critical role in…
While it is widely acknowledged that system-spanning particulate structures contribute to the observed yield stress and shear-thinning in attractive colloidal gels, a comprehensive understanding of the underlying microscopic mechanisms…
We investigate the effect of annealed disorder on the mechanical properties and plasticity of a modeled amorphous solid by introducing a small fraction of heavy impurities into the material which resembles real experimental systems. The…
We study colloidal gels formed by competing electrostatic repulsion and short-range attraction by means of extensive numerical simulations under external shear. We show that, upon varying the repulsion strength, the gel structure and its…
Disordered biopolymer gels have striking mechanical properties including strong nonlinearities. In the case of athermal gels (such as collagen-I) the nonlinearity has long been associated with a crossover from a bending dominated to a…
We investigate the structure and equilibrium linear-response dynamics of suspensions of hard colloidal dumbbells using Brownian Dynamics computer simulations. The focus lies on the dense fluid and plastic crystal states of the colloids with…
Using a simplified microstructural picture we show that interactions between thermosenstive microgel particles can be described by a polymer brush like corona decorating the dense core. The softness of the potential is set by the relative…
We study the dynamics of quasi-two-dimensional concentrated suspensions of colloidal particles in active gels by computer simulations. Remarkably, we find that activity induces a dynamic clustering of colloids even in the absence of any…
We study the uniaxial compressive behavior of disordered colloidal free-standing micropillars composed of a bidisperse mixture of 3 and 6 um polystyrene particles. Mechanical annealing of confined pillars enables variation of the packing…
The shear rheology of soft particles systems becomes complex at large density because crowding effects may induce a glass transition for Brownian particles, or a jamming transition for non-Brownian systems. Here we successfully explore the…
External fields can decidedly alter the free energy landscape of soft materials and can be exploited as a powerful tool for the assembly of targeted nanostructures and colloidal materials. Here, we use computer simulations to demonstrate…
Dispersing small particles in a liquid can produce surprising behaviors when the solids fraction becomes large: rapid shearing drives these systems out of equilibrium and can lead to dramatic increases in viscosity (shear-thickening) or…
We investigate the spatial correlations of microscopic stresses in soft particulate gels, using 2D and 3D numerical simulations. We use a recently developed theoretical framework predicting the analytical form of stress-stress correlations…
The depletion interaction mediated by non-adsorbing polymers promotes condensation and assembly of repulsive colloidal particles into diverse higher-order structures and materials. One example, with particularly rich emergent behaviors, is…
Microgels are soft colloidal particles constituted by cross-linked polymer networks with a high potential for applications. In particular, after adsorption at a fluid interface, interfacial tension provides two-dimensional (2D) confinement…
A general class of nonadditive sticky-hard-sphere binary mixtures, where small and large spheres represent the solvent and the solute, respectively, is introduced. The solute-solute and solvent-solvent interactions are of hard-sphere type,…
We report a simulation study for bottle-brush polymers grafted on a rigid backbone. Using a standard coarse-grained bead-spring model extensive molecular dynamics simulations for such macromolecules under good solvent conditions are…