Related papers: Polymeric Solvents Control Swelling-Induced Surfac…
In the recent years many research groups have studied slippery properties on lubricating fluid infused rough surfaces using hydrophobic substrates. These surfaces show excellent slippery behaviour for water and other liquids. Here we…
Obstructions influence the growth and expansion of bodies in a wide range of settings -- but isolating and understanding their impact can be difficult in complex environments. Here, we study obstructed growth/expansion in a model system…
Understanding the mechanics of detrimental convective instabilities in drying polymer solutions is crucial in many applications such as the production of film coatings. It is well known that solvent evaporation in polymer solutions can lead…
We study the dynamics of a polymer when it is quenched from a $\theta$ solvent into a good or bad solvent by means of a Langevin equation. The variation of the radius of gyration is studied as a function of time. For the first stage of…
Using experiments and numerical simulations, we investigate the spontaneous spreading of droplets of aqueous glycerol (Newtonian) and aqueous polymer (shear-thinning) solutions on smooth surfaces. We find that in the first millisecond the…
The number of allowed configurations of a polymer is reduced by the presence of a repulsive surface resulting in an entropic force between them. We develop a method to calculate the entropic force, and detailed pressure distribution, for…
Cononsolvency occurs when two miscible, competing good solvents for a polymer are mixed, resulting in a loss of solubility. In this study, we demonstrate through simulations, supported by theory, that cononsolvency can be driven solely by…
The swelling dynamics of polymer gels are characterized by the (collective) diffusion coefficient $D$ of the polymer network. Here, we measure the temperature dependence of $D$ of polymer gels with controlled homogeneous network structures…
Wrinkling patterns at the metallized surface of thin polymer films are shown to be sensitive to the sticky or slippery character of the polymer/substrate interface (titanium coating, polystyrene film and coated silicon substrate). Selective…
In drying liquid films of polymer-colloid mixtures, the stratification in which polymers are placed on top of larger colloids is studied. It is often presumed that the formation of segregated polymer-colloid layers is solely due to the…
The viscoelastic effect on the hydrodynamic relaxation in semidilute polymer solutions is investigated. From the linearized two-fluid model equations, we predict that the dynamical asymmetry coupling between the velocity fluctuations and…
Polymeric nanoparticles (NPs) have a great application potential in science and technology. Their functionality strongly depends on their size. We present a theory for the size of NPs formed by precipitation of polymers into a bad solvent…
In the technique of microrheology, macroscopic rheological parameters as well as information about local structure are deduced from the behavior of microscopic probe particles under thermal or active forcing. Microrheology requires…
We study the coalescence of identical viscous blisters beneath an elastic sheet both experimentally and numerically. Using a time-resolved synthetic schlieren technique, we measure the evolution of the thickness field of the merging…
The interactions between spherical colloids covered with end-grafted polymers (brushes) immersed in a polymer melt are studied theoretically. We show that attractive enthalpic interactions between the two polymer species, characterized by a…
Understanding how topological constraints affect the dynamics of polymers in solution is at the basis of any polymer theory and it is particularly needed for melts of rings. These polymers fold as crumpled and space-filling objects and,…
Smectite clay minerals have an outsize impact on the response of clay-rich media to common stimuli, such as water imbibition and ion exchange, motivating extensive effort to understand microscopic behaviors resulting from these processes…
High molecular weight polymer solutions have a powerful tendency to deposit adsorbed layers when exposed to even mildly attractive surfaces. The equilibrium properties of these dense interfacial layers have been extensively studied…
\textbf{Background} Hydrogels are crosslinked polymer networks that can absorb and retain a large fraction of liquid. Near a critical sliding velocity, hydrogels pressed against smooth surfaces exhibit time-dependent frictional behavior…
Forming an interface between immiscible fluids incurs a free-energy cost that usually favors minimizing the interfacial area. An emulsion droplet of fixed volume therefore tends to form a sphere, and pairs of droplets tend to coalesce.…