Related papers: Polymer Crystallization in 25 nm Spheres
We demonstrate that nascent polymer crystals (i.e., nuclei) are anisotropic entities, with neither spherical nor cylindrical geometry, in contrast to previous assumptions. In fact, cylindrical, spherical, and other high symmetry geometries…
Diblock copolymers by virtue of the chemical dissimilarity between the constituting blocks exhibit microphase separation in the melt state. The phase separated melt can successfully be exploited to control the morphology of the final semi…
Block copolymer melts self-assemble in the bulk into a variety of nanostructures, making them perfect candidates to template the position of nanoparticles. The morphological changes of block copolymers are studied in the presence of a…
In supercooled liquids, vitrification generally suppresses crystallization. Yet some glasses can still crystallize despite the arrest of diffusive motion. This ill-understood process may limit the stability of glasses, but its microscopic…
In this paper, we report dynamic Monte Carlo simulation results on the crystallization of crystalline/crystalline (A/B) symmetric binary polymer blend, wherein the melting temperature of A-polymer is higher than B-polymer. Crystallization…
Kinetic barriers cause polymers to crystallize incompletely, into nanoscale lamellae interleaved with amorphous regions. As a result, crystalline polymers are full of crystal-melt interfaces, which dominate their physical properties. The…
Bifurcations in kinetic pathways decide the evolution of a system. An example is crystallization, in which the thermodynamically stable polymorph may not form due to kinetic hindrance. Here, we use confined self-assembly to investigate the…
We present computer simulations of concentrated solutions of unknotted nonconcatenated semiflexible ring polymers. Unlike in their flexible counterparts, shrinking involves a strong energetic penalty, favoring interpenetration and…
We introduce a general formalism to analyze nucleation phenomena in inhomogeneous media which considers the influence of the metastable phase, which is treated as a heat bath in which clusters are embedded, in the dynamics of the nucleation…
We report the formation of colloidal complexes resulting from the electrostatic co-assembly between anionic surfactants and cationic polyelectrolytes or block copolymers. Combining light and x-ray scattering experiments with cryogenic…
The process of homogeneous crystal nucleation has been considered in a model liquid, where the interparticle interaction is described by a short-range spherical oscillatory potential. Mechanisms of initiating structural ordering in the…
Polymers with both soluble and insoluble blocks typically self-assemble into micelles, aggregates of a finite number of polymers where the soluble blocks shield the insoluble ones from contact with the solvent. Upon increasing…
We study by molecular dynamics the interplay between arrest and crystallization in hard spheres. For state points in the plane of volume fraction ($0.54 \leq phi \leq 0.63$) and polydispersity ($0 \leq s \leq 0.085$), we delineate states…
We experimentally study the crystallization of a monolayer of vibrated discs with a built-in polar asymmetry, a model system of active liquids, and contrast it with that of vibrated isotropic discs. Increasing the packing fraction $\phi$,…
We present a kinetic model of crystal growth of polymers of finite molecular weight. Experiments help to classify polymer crystallization broadly into two kinetic regimes. One is observed in melts or in high molar mass polymer solutions and…
We present an experiment on crystallization of packings of macroscopic granular spheres. This system is often considered to be a model for thermally driven atomic or colloidal systems. Cyclically shearing a packing of frictional spheres, we…
Monte Carlo simulation on the crystallization of double crystalline diblock copolymer unravels an intrinsic relationship between block asymmetry and crystallization behaviour. We model crystalline A-B diblock copolymer, wherein the melting…
We model a melt of monodisperse side-chain liquid crystalline polymers as a melt of comb copolymers in which the side groups are rod-coil diblock copolymers. We consider both excluded volume and Maier-Saupe interactions. The first acts…
We use machine learning algorithms to detect the crystalline phase in undercooled melts in molecular dynamics simulations. Our classification method is based on local conformation and environmental fingerprints of individual monomers. In…
The equilibrium properties of block copolymer micelles confined in polymer thin films are investigated using self-consistent field theory. The theory is based on a model system consisting of AB diblock copolymers and A homopolymers. Two…