Related papers: Entropic phase separation in polymer--vitrimer mel…
Phase separation within polymer networks plays a central role in shaping the structure and mechanics of both synthetic materials and living cells, including the formation of biomolecular condensates within cytoskeletal networks. Previous…
Vitrimers, an important subset of dynamically crosslinked polymer networks, have many technological applications for their excellent properties, and the ability to be re-processed through plastic flow above the so-called vitrification…
Since their discovery in 2011, vitrimers - covalent associative network polymers - have challenged the traditional understanding of soft matter relaxation dynamics: unlike in typical glass-forming liquids, vitrimers' viscous relaxation can…
We study a generic model of self-assembling chains which can branch and form networks with branching points (junctions) of arbitrary functionality. The physical realizations include physical gels, wormlike micells, dipolar fluids and…
We study polymer-polymer phase separation in a common good solvent by means of Monte Carlo simulations of the bond-fluctuation model. Below a critical, chain-length dependent concentration, no phase separation occurs. For higher…
Vitrimers are a class of polymers characterized by dynamic covalent networks, where specific monomer units, which are know as stickers, form reversible crosslinks that enable network rearrangement without loss of overall connectivity. The…
We present a non-isothermal mesoscopic model for investigation of the phase transition dynamics of thermoresponsive polymers. Since this model conserves energy in the simulations, it is able to correctly capture not only the transient…
The phase separation of a simple binary mixture of incompatible linear polymers in solution is investigated using an extension of the sedimentation equilibrium method, whereby the osmotic pressure of the mixture is extracted from the…
I consider the effects of polymers on the smectic phase of a host liquid crystal matrix. Focusing on the regime in which the polymers are predominately confined between the smectic layers, I find that the presence of the polymers can lead…
Given the wide range of length scales, the analysis of polymer systems often requires coarse-graining, for which various levels of description may be possible depending on the phenomenon under consideration. Here, we provide a super-coarse…
Phase separation of two phase separating solutes in a common solvent can result in mesoscale (micron-sized) droplets with complex topologies of the domains of each solute within each droplet. Such topologies have been observed in-vitro in…
When non-adsorbing polymers are added to an isotropic suspension of rod-like colloids, the colloids effectively attract each other via depletion forces. We performed Monte Carlo simulations to study the phase diagram of such rod-polymer…
We introduce a lattice model of dimers with directional interactions as a paradigm of molecular fluids or strongly correlated Cooper pairs in electronic systems. The model supports an intermediate phase that is common to both systems. There…
Thermo-gelling polymers have been envisioned as promising smart biomaterials but limited to their weak mechanical and thermodynamic stabilities. Here we propose a new thermo-gelling vitrimer, which remains at a liquid state because of the…
We model the flow behaviour of dense melts of flexible and semiflexible ring polymers in the presence of walls using a hybrid multiscale approach. Specifically, we perform molecular dynamics simulations and apply the Irving-Kirkwood formula…
In view of recent intense experimental and theoretical interests in the biophysics of liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS) of intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs), heteropolymer models with chain molecules configured as self-avoiding…
Surface segregation of the low-molecular weight component in a polymeric mixture leads to degradation of industrial formulations. We report a simultaneous phase separation and surface migration phenomena in oligomer-polymer and oligomer-gel…
We propose a novel phase-field model to predict elastic microphase separation in polymer gels. To this end, we extend the Cahn-Hilliard free-energy functional to incorporate an elastic strain energy and a coupling term. These contributions…
Spatially uniform electric fields have been used to induce instabilities in liquids and polymers, and to orient and deform ordered phases of block-copolymers. Here we discuss the demixing phase transition occurring in liquid mixtures when…
Vitrimers are a relatively new class of polymer materials with unique properties offered by cross-links that can undergo associative exchange dynamics. We here present a new class of vitrimers based on poly(methyl acrylate) with cross-links…