Related papers: A model for gelation with explicit solvent effects…
Self-oscillating gels are chemically-responsive hydrogels coupled to an oscillating chemical reaction of a stimulus solute. In response to the oscillating solute concentration field, responsive gels periodically swell and deswell, expelling…
Ferrogels, i.e., hydrogels loaded with magnetic nanoparticles, have the ability to deform in external magnetic fields. The precise shape of deformation and the alignment of the gel in the field, however, depend on the interplay of several…
Polyelectrolyte gels are a very attractive class of actuation materials with remarkable electronic and mechanical properties with a great similarity to biological contractile tissues. They consist of a polymer network with ionizable groups…
We develop a new quantitative molecular theory of liquid-phase dipolar polymer gels. We model monomer units of the polymer network as a couple of charged sites separated by a fluctuating distance. For the first time, within the random phase…
The dynamical properties of the site frustrated percolation model are investigated and compared with those of glass forming liquids. When the density of the particles on the lattice becomes high enough, the dynamics of the model becomes…
Irreversible aggregation processes involving reactive and frozen clusters are investigated using the rate equation approach. In aggregation events, two clusters join irreversibly to form a larger cluster, and additionally, reactive clusters…
It is shown that the traditionally accepted "Rouse values" for the critical exponents at the gelation transition do not arise from the Rouse model for gelling polymers. The true critical behaviour of the Rouse model for gelling polymers is…
In this work, we develop a rigorous theoretical framework for the evolution of linear viscoelastic properties across the sol-gel transition. More specifically, we derive general admissible expressions for the relaxation modulus and dynamic…
We study the spatio-temporal dynamics of a model of polar active fluid in two dimensions. The system exhibits a transition from an isotropic to a polarized state as a function of density. The uniform polarized state is, however, unstable…
We analyse the dynamics of different routes to collapse of a constrained polyelectrolyte gel in contact with an ionic bath. The evolution of the gel is described by a model that incorporates non-linear elasticity, Stefan-Maxwell diffusion…
Diffusion of particles in complex fluids and gels is difficult to describe and often lies beyond the scope of the classical Stokes-Einstein relation. One of the main lines of research over the past few decades has sought to relate…
In this paper, we discuss the equilibrium phases and collapse transitions of a lyotropic nematic gel immersed in an isotropic solvent. A nematic gel consists of a cross-linked polymer network with rod-like molecules embedded in it. Upon…
We derive a multiphysics model that accounts for network elasticity with spontaneous strains, swelling and nematic interactions in liquid crystal gels (LCGs). We discuss the coupling among the various physical mechanisms, with particular…
Gels are an increasingly important class of soft materials with applications ranging from regenerative medicine to commodity materials. A major drawback of gels is their relative mechanical weakness, which worsens further under strain. We…
By studying numerically the phase-ordering kinetics of a two-dimensional ferromagnetic Ising model with quenched disorder -- either random bonds or random fields -- we show that a critical percolation structure forms in an early stage and…
In this paper, we investigate the use of so called "duality lemmas" to study the system of discrete coagulation-fragmentation equations with diffusion. When the fragmentation is strong enough with respect to the coagulation, we show that we…
A simple, discrete, parametric model is proposed to describe conditional (correlated) deposition of particles on a surface and formation of a connecting (percolating) cluster. The surface changes spontaneously its properties (phase…
The proper design of DNA sequences allows for the formation of well defined supramolecular units with controlled interactions via a consecution of self-assembling processes. Here, we benefit from the controlled DNA self-assembly to…
Curable hydrogels have tunable properties that make them well-suited for applications in drug delivery, cell therapies, and 3D bioprinting. Advances in microfluidic droplet generation enable rapid fabrication of polymer-filled droplets.…
The properties of the pure-site clusters of spin models, i.e. the clusters which are obtained by joining nearest-neighbour spins of the same sign, are here investigated. In the Ising model in two dimensions it is known that such clusters…