Related papers: Entanglements in a Quiescent and Sheared Polymer M…
The dependence of mechanical properties on microscopic interactions remains a central problem in the physics of disordered solids near the jamming transition. We numerically and theoretically investigate the mechanical response of jammed…
We demonstrate that entanglement can persistently recur in an oscillating two-spin molecule that is coupled to a hot and noisy environment, in which no static entanglement can survive. The system represents a non-equilibrium quantum system…
We have developed a theory of polymer entanglement using an extended Cahn-Hilliard functional, with two extra terms. One is a nonlocal attractive term, operating over mesoscales, which is interpreted as giving rise to entanglement, and the…
We study the reaction kinetics of end-functionalized polymer chains dispersed in an unreactive polymer melt. Starting from an infinite hierarchy of coupled equations for many-chain correlation functions, a closed equation is derived for the…
An experimental investigation is reported on the effect of shear on the bursting of molten ultra-thin polymer films embedded in an immiscible matrix. By using an optical microscope coupled with a shearing hotstage, the dewetting dynamics,…
We present a computer simulation of entangled polymer solutions at equilibrium. The chains repel each other via a soft Gaussian potential, appropriate for semi-dilute solutions at the scale of a correlation blob. The key innovation to…
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…
The formation of chain-folded structures from the melt is observed in molecular dynamics simulations resembling the lamellae of polymer crystals. Crystallization and subsequent melting temperatures are related linearly to the inverse…
Entanglement is considered to be one of the most profound features of quantum mechanics. An entangled state of a system consisting of two subsystems cannot be described as a product of the quantum states of the two subsystems. In this sense…
Results from numerical simulations of polymers under shear flow are compared with predictions for shear banding based on a model coupling Rolie-Poly-like tube dynamics to the entanglement dynamics mediated by Convected Constraint Release…
We present a numerical analysis of the effect of particle elongation on the quasistatic behavior of sheared granular media by means of the Contact Dynamics method. The particle shapes are rounded-cap rectangles characterized by their…
We use non-equilibrium atomistic molecular dynamics simulations of unentangled melts of linear and star polymers ($\mathrm{C_{25}H_{52}}$) to study the steady-state viscoelastic response under confinement within nanoscale hematite $\left (…
We investigate the dynamics of entanglement in the excitation transfer through a chain of interacting molecules. In the case of two-molecule coupled to noisy environments we show that entanglement can be further enhanced if the distance…
We present a molecular dynamics simulation study of crystal nucleation from undercooled melts of n-alkanes, and we identify the molecular mechanism of homogeneous crystal nucleation under quiescent conditions and under shear flow. We…
A few experiments have reported that the time development of shear stress under fast start-up shear deformations exhibits double peaks before reaching the steady state for bimodal blends of entangled linear polymers in specific conditions.…
We present results from molecular dynamics simulations of strictly two-dimensional (2D) polymer melts and thin polymer films in a slit geometry of thickness of the order of the radius of gyration. We find that the dynamics of the 2D melt is…
The shape of a polymer plays an important role in determining its interactions with other molecules and with the environment, and is in turn affected by both of them. As a consequence, in the literature the shape properties of a chain in…
Self-healing of polymer films often takes place as the molecules diffuse across a damaged region, above their melting temperature. Using molecular dynamics simulations we probe the healing of polymer films and compare the results with those…
The interaction of polymers with small-scale velocity gradients can trigger a coil-stretch transition in the polymers. We analyze this transition within a direct numerical simulation of shear turbulence with an Oldroyd-B model for the…
In a variety of situations, isolated polymer molecules are found in a vacuum and here we examine their properties. Angular momentum conservation is shown to significantly alter the average size of a chain and its conservation is only broken…