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Plastics have become integral to our society due to their durability and water stability, which is achieved through strong intermolecular interactions. However, these properties also make them persistent disruptors of ecological cycles, in…
Controlling the assembly of polyelectrolytes and surfactant at liquid-liquid interfaces offers new ways to fabricate soft materials with specific physical properties. However, little is known of the relationships between the kinetics of…
Microfluidic channels are integral to biomedical technology and process engineering, offering versatility in handling fluids with complex properties, often a combination of viscous and elastic attributes. Despite significant advancements in…
Chitosan and chitin are promising biopolymers used in many areas including biomedical applications, such as tissue engineering and viscosupplementation. Chitosan shares similar properties with hyaluronan, a natural component of synovial…
We discuss the spatiotemporal behavior of local density and its relation to dynamical heterogeneity in a highly supercooled liquid by using molecular dynamics simulations of a binary mixture with different particle sizes in two dimensions.…
While the dynamics of polymer chains in equilibrium media is well understood by now, the polymer dynamics in active non-equilibrium environments can be very different. Here we study the dynamics of polymers in a viscous medium containing…
Chitosan, a natural, cationic polysaccharide, may be a hydrocolloid strategic to formulate acidic food products, as it can act as both bio-functional and technofunctional constituent. Typically, acetic acid is used to disperse chitosan in…
Piezoelectricity, the generation of electric charge in response to mechanical stress, is a key property in both natural and synthetic materials. This study significantly boosts the piezoelectric response of chitosan, a biodegradable…
We study the phenomenon of migration of the small molecular weight component of a binary polymer mixture to the free surface using mean field and self-consistent field theories. By proposing a free energy functional that incorporates…
The development of a coherent conceptual basis for the treatment of non-linear microscopic phenomena, such as, hydrodynamic interaction, finite extensibility, excluded volume and internal viscosity, in molecular theories of dilute polymer…
Chitin and protein are two main building blocks for many natural biomaterials. The interaction between chitin and protein critically determines the properties of the composite biological materials. As living organisms usually encounter…
Plasticisers (PLs) are small additives commonly incorporated into polymer composites to enhance processability and improve mechanical properties. Their effectiveness depends heavily on their miscibility within the polymer melt, yet…
Intelligent metamaterials have attracted widespread research interest due to their self-adaptive capabilities and controllability. They hold great potential for advancing fluid control by providing responsive and flexible solutions.…
Additives are essential to enhance or modify the properties of plastics for target applications. However, finding appropriate additives may be challenging, since we lack knowledge on their interactions with the plastics and with moisture,…
Many practically relevant materials combine properties of viscous fluids and elastic solids to viscoelastic behavior. Our focus is on the induced dynamic behavior of damped finite-sized particulate inclusions in such substances. We…
Vitrimers are polymer networks that can undergo bond exchange reactions. They dynamically rearrange their structures while maintaining their overall integrity, thus resulting in unique properties such as self-healing, reprocessability,…
Bidisperse particle systems are common in both natural and engineered materials, and it is known to influence packing, flow, and stability. However, their direct effect on elastic properties, particularly in systems with attractive…
Polymer microgels exhibit intriguing macroscopic flow properties arising from their unique microscopic structure. Microgel colloids usually comprise a crosslinked polymer network with a radially decaying density profile, resulting in a…
By means of contact-density chain-growth simulations, we investigate a simple lattice model of a flexible polymer interacting with an attractive substrate. The contact density is a function of the numbers of monomer-substrate and…
Living cells are soft bodies of a characteristic form, but endowed with a capacity for a steady turnover of their structures. Both of these material properties, i.e. recovery of the shape after an external stress has been imposed and…