Related papers: Colloid-Induced Polymer Compression
We consider a Landau-de Gennes model for a polydisperse, inhomogeneous suspension of colloidal inclusions in a nematic host, in the dilute regime. We study the homogenised limit and compute the effective free energy of the composite…
A geometry-based density functional theory is presented for mixtures of hard spheres, hard needles and hard platelets; both the needles and the platelets are taken to be of vanishing thickness. Geometrical weight functions that are…
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…
Using Brownian dynamics (BD) simulations and an analytical approach we investigate the shear-induced, nonequilibrium dynamics of dense colloidal suspensions confined to a narrow slit-pore. Focusing on situations where the colloids arrange…
Colloidal particles hold promise for mobilizing and removing trapped immiscible fluids from porous media, with implications for key energy and water applications. Most studies focus on accomplishing this goal using particles that can…
We investigate excluded-volume effects in a bidisperse colloidal suspension near a flexible interface. Inspired by a recent experiment by Dinsmore et al. (Phys. Rev, Lett. 80, 409 (1998)), we study the adsorption of a mesoscopic bead on the…
The filtration membranes are often elaborated through a phase separation process where a polymer rich phase and a polymer poor phase spontaneously form through spinodal decomposition. One process that is still not well understood from a…
We consider a fully directed self-avoiding walk model on a cubic lattice to mimic the conformations of an infinitely long confined flexible polymer chain; and the confinement condition is achieved by two parallel athermal plates. The…
When two macromolecules come very near in a fluid, the surrounding molecules, having finite volume, are less likely to get in between. This leads to a pressure difference manifesting as an entropic attraction, called depletion force. Here…
We develop a theory of polymers in a nematic solvent by exploiting an analogy with two-dimensional quantum bosons at zero temperature. We argue that the theory should also describe polymers in an {\sl isotropic} solvent. The dense phase is…
The phase behavior of colloidal particles embedded in a binary fluid is influenced by wetting layers surrounding each particle. The free energy of the fluid film depends on its morphology, i.e., on size, shape and connectivity. Under rather…
Colloid-polymer mixtures can undergo spinodal decomposition into colloid-rich and colloid-poor regions. Gelation results when interconnected colloid-rich regions solidify. We show that this occurs when these regions undergo a glass…
The binodals and the non-ergodicity lines of a binary mixture of hard sphere-like particles with large size ratio are computed for studying the interplay between dynamic arrest and phase separation in depletion-driven colloidal mixtures.…
We analyze static properties of a strongly confined semiflexible polymer, i.e. either trapped in a closed space or compressed by external forces, in an athermal solvent. Like a flexible polymer case, we can resort to an analogy with the…
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,…
Phase separation of two phase separating solutes in a common solvent can result in mesoscale (micron-sized) droplets with complex topologies of the domains of each solute within each droplet. Such topologies have been observed in-vitro in…
Compression of an adsorbed polymer layer distorts its relaxed structure. Surface force measurements from different laboratories show that the return to this relaxed structure after the compression is released can be slowed to the scale of…
For biologically relevant macromolecules such as intrinsically disordered proteins, internal degrees of freedom that allow for shape changes have a large influence on both the motion and function of the compound. A detailed understanding of…
The formation of (bio)molecular condensates via liquid-liquid phase separation in cells has received increasing attention, as these coacervates play important functional and regulatory roles within biological systems. However, the majority…
We examine the structural and dynamic properties of confined binary hard-sphere mixtures designed to mimic realizable colloidal thin films. Using computer simulations, governed by either Newtonian or overdamped Langevin dynamics, together…