Related papers: Polymeric Solvents Control Swelling-Induced Surfac…
Polymer gels are comprised of a three-dimensional, cross-linked network that can typically withstand the mechanical deformation associated with both swelling and de-swelling. Thus, gels can be designed with smart behaviors that require both…
Polymer brush layers are responsive materials that swell in contact with good solvents and their vapors. We deposit drops of an almost completely wetting volatile oil onto an oleophilic polymer brush layer and follow the response of the…
Soft membranes are commonly employed in shape-morphing applications, where the material is programmed to achieve a target shape upon activation by an external trigger, and as coating layers that alter the surface characteristics of bulk…
Porous gels -- gels with solvent-filled pores that are much larger than their mesh size -- are widely used in engineering and biomedical applications due to their tunable mechanics, high water content, and selective permeability. Among…
A sheet of glassy polymers placed in a solvent shows swelling behaviors quite different from that of soft polymers (rubbers and gels). (1) Non-Fickian diffusion (called case II diffusion): As solvent permeates into the sample, a sharp front…
We present a pedagogical review of the swelling thermodynamics and phase transitions of polymer gels. In particular, we discuss how features of the volume phase transition of the gel's osmotic equilibrium is analogous to other transitions…
We investigate the swelling dynamics driven by solvent absorption in a hydrogel sphere immersed in a solvent bath, through an accurate computational model and numerical study. We extensively describe the transient process from dry to wet…
When a gel absorbs solvent from surrounding, stress field is created in the gel, and this causes complex dynamics of the swelling behavior. Here we study this effect for disk-shaped gel by rigorously solving the diffusio-mechanical coupling…
We study the effects of charge-regulated acid/base equilibrium on the swelling of polyelectrolyte gels, by considering a combination of the Poisson-Boltzmann theory and a two-site charge-regulation model based on the Langmuir adsorption…
Macromolecular solubility in solvent mixtures often exhibit striking and paradoxical nature. For example, when two well miscible poor solvents for a given polymer are mixed together, the same polymer may swell within intermediate mixing…
Poroelastic materials, consisting of a permeable solid matrix infiltrated with fluid, are ubiquitous in natural and engineering contexts. In poroelastic polymer solids, the elastic matrix swells to equilibrium when immersed in a solvent…
Stimuli-responsive lyogels are known for their ability to undergo significant macroscopic changes when exposed to external stimuli. While thermo-responsive gels, such as poly N isopropylacrylamide (pNIPAM), have been extensively studied…
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…
Motivated by the observations of intracellular phase separations and the wetting of cell membranes by protein droplets, we study the nonequilibrium surface wetting by Monte Carlo simulations of a lattice gas model involving particle…
Control of frictional interactions among liquid-suspended particles has led to tunable, strikingly non-Newtonian rheology via the formation of strong flow constraints as particles come into close proximity under shear. Typically, these…
We propose and analyze a mathematical model of the mechanics of gels, consisting of the laws of balance of mass and linear momentum. We consider a gel to be an immiscible and incompressible mixture of a nonlinearly elastic polymer and a…
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…
Whereas it is experimentally known that the inclusion of nanoparticles in hydrogels can lead to a mechanical reinforcement, a detailed molecular understanding of the adhesion mechanism is still lacking. Here we use coarse-grained molecular…
Colloidal spheres synthesized from polymer gels swell by absorbing molecules from solution. The resulting change in size can be monitored with nanometer precision using holographic video microscopy. When the absorbate is chemically similar…
Solid interfaces have intrinsic elasticity. However, in most experiments, this is obscured by bulk stresses. Through microscopic observations of the contact-line geometry of a partially wetting droplet on an anisotropically stretched…