Related papers: Can Polymer Coils be modeled as "Soft Colloids"?
The massive field theory approach in fixed space dimensions $d=3$ is applied to investigate a dilute solution of long-flexible polymer chains in a good solvent between two parallel repulsive walls, two inert walls and for the mixed case of…
We study the behavior of a flexible polymer chain in the presence of a low-molecular weight solvent in the vicinity of a liquid-gas critical point within the framework of a self-consistent field theory. The total free energy of the dilute…
We consider a model mixture of hard colloidal spheres and non-adsorbing polymer chains in a theta solvent. The polymer component is modelled as a polydisperse mixture of effective spheres, mutually noninteracting but excluded from the…
The properties of semidilute polymer solutions are investigated at equilibrium and under shear flow by mesoscale simulations, which combine molecular dynamics simulations and the multiparticle collision dynamics approach. In semidilute…
The structure of polymer coils near interfaces between coexisting phases of symmetrical polymer mixtures (AB) is discussed, as well as the structure of symmetric diblock copolymers of the same chain length N adsorbed at the interface. The…
When a colloid is mixed with a depletant such as a non-adsorbing polymer, one observes attractive effective interactions between the colloidal particles. If these particles are anisotropic, analysis of these effective interactions is…
Soft particles display highly versatile properties with respect to hard colloids, even more so at fluid-fluid interfaces. In particular, microgels, consisting of a cross-linked polymer network, are able to deform and flatten upon adsorption…
The correlations between the segments of a semidilute polymer solution are found to induce correlations in the positions of small particles added to the solution. Small means a diameter much less than the polymer's correlation length. In…
We use the thread model for linear chains of interacting monomers, and the ``polymer reference interaction site model'' (PRISM) formalism to determine the monomer-monomer pair correlation function $h_{mm}(r)$ for dilute and semi-dilute…
We examine the dynamics of silica particles grafted with high molecular weight polystyrene suspended in semidilute solutions of chemically similar linear polymer using x-ray photon correlation spectroscopy. The particle dynamics decouple…
A new potential of mean force is proposed for colloidal dispersions, which is obtained from coarse grained, pair interactions between colloidal particles formed by the explicit grouping of particles that are themselves groups of atoms and…
We simulate model systems of charged spherical particles in their counterion solution and measure the thermodynamic pressure and the pair distribution function from which we derive effective potentials of mean force. For a system with only…
We calculate the two, three, four, and five-body (state independent) effective potentials between the centers of mass (CM) of self avoiding walk polymers by Monte-Carlo simulations. For full overlap, these coarse-grained n-body interactions…
The properties of semiflexible polymers tethered by one end to an impenetrable wall and exposed to oscillatory shear flow are investigated by mesoscale simulations. A polymer, confined in two dimensions, is described by a linear bead-spring…
The density profile and surface tension for the interface of phase-separated colloid-polymer mixtures have been studied in the framework of the square gradient approximation for both ideal and interacting polymers in good solvent. The…
A soft ellipsoid model for Gaussian polymer chains is studied, following an idea proposed by Murat and Kremer [J. Chem. Phys. 108, 4340 (1998)]. In this model chain molecules are mapped onto ellipsoids with certain shapes, and to each shape…
Controlling the structure of polymer solutions near a solid surface is crucial for many industrial processes, as it significantly impacts solution flow and influences slip at the interface. To date, only a few techniques have been developed…
This contribution briefly reviews some recent work demonstrating the partial breakdown of the colloidal fluid <--> atomic fluid analogy. The success of liquid state theory for atomic fluids stems in part from the van der Waals picture,…
We determine the solvent mediated contribution to the effective potentials for model colloidal or nano- particles dispersed in a binary solvent that exhibits fluid-fluid phase separation. Using a simple density functional theory we…
Soft colloids allow to explore high density states well beyond random close packing. An important open question is whether softness controls the dynamics under these dense conditions. While experimental works reported conflicting results,…