Related papers: Entropic phase separation of linked beads
We study the structure and dynamics of a transient network composed of droplets of microemulsion connected by telechelic polymers. The polymer induces a bridging attraction between droplets without changing their shape. A viscoelastic…
Living and engineered systems rely on the stable coexistence of two interspersed liquid phases. Yet surface tension drives their complete separation. Here we show that stable droplets of uniform and tuneable size can be produced through…
Whereas entropy can induce phase behavior that is as rich as seen in energetic systems, microphase separation remains a very rare phenomenon in entropic systems. In this paper, we present a density functional approach to study the…
In order to study the viscoelastic properties of certain complex fluids which are described in terms of a multiconnected transient network we have developed a convenient model system composed of microemulsion droplets linked by telechelic…
Polymer chains decorated with a fraction of monomers capable of forming reversible bonds form transient polymer networks that are important in soft and biological systems. If chains are flexible and the attractive monomers are all of the…
Traditional plastics demand a choice between durability (thermosets) and reprocessability (thermoplastics). Vitrimers are a recent class of polymer network combining both these qualities. Their increased cost of production can be offset by…
We propose a continuum theory of the liquid-liquid phase separation in an elastic network where phase-separated microscopic droplets rich in one fluid component can form as an interplay of fluids mixing, droplet nucleation, network…
When a polymer solution undergoes viscoelastic phase separation, the polymer-rich phase forms a network-like structure even if it is a minor phase. This unique feature is induced by polymer dynamics, which are constrained by the temporal…
Phase separation within polymer networks plays a central role in shaping the structure and mechanics of both synthetic materials and living cells, including the formation of biomolecular condensates within cytoskeletal networks. Previous…
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…
We study a generic model of self-assembling chains which can branch and form networks with branching points (junctions) of arbitrary functionality. The physical realizations include physical gels, wormlike micells, dipolar fluids and…
Recent advances in Generalized Ensemble simulations and microcanonical analysis allowed the investigation of structural transitions in polymer models over a broad range of local bending and torsion strengths. It is reasonable to argue that…
Pattern formation inside a liquid phase is a phenomenon involved in many different aspects of life on our planet. The droplet form of a liquid that evaporates can reveal patterns that depend on the chemistry of the droplet and the physical…
Phase separation has recently emerged as an important organizational principle in the dense and heterogeneous environment within living cells. Here, we use a synthetic system to show that compressive stresses in a polymer network suppress…
The concept of network immunity, i.e., the robustness of the network connectivity after a random deletion of edges or vertices, has been investigated in biological or communication networks. We apply this concept to a self-assembling,…
DNA is now firmly established as a versatile and robust platform for achieving synthetic nanostructures. While the folding of single molecules into complex structures is routinely achieved through engineering basepair sequences, much less…
Associative polymers (APs) with reversible, specific interactions between ``sticker'' sites exhibit a phase behavior that depends on a delicate balance between distinct contributions controlling the binding. For highly-bonded systems, it is…
A recent study has demonstrated that phase separation in binary liquid mixtures is arrested in the presence of elastic networks and can lead to a nearly uniformly-sized distribution of the dilute-phase droplets. At longer timescales, these…
Diffusive transport of small molecules within the internal structures of biological and synthetic material systems is complex because the crowded environment presents chemical and physical barriers to mobility. We explored this mobility…
We use computer simulations to study the relaxation dynamics of a model for oil-in-water microemulsion droplets linked with telechelic polymers. This system exhibits both gel and glass phases and we show that the competition between these…