Related papers: Glassy correlations and microstructures in randoml…
We model the behaviour of a single colloid embedded in a cross-linked polymer gel, immersed in a viscous background fluid. External fields actuate the particle into a periodic motion, which deforms the embedding matrix and creates a local…
In conflict with standard notions of thermodynamics, mesoscopically-sized inclusions (``clusters'') of a solute-rich liquid have been observed in equilibrated solutions of proteins and other molecules. According to a complexation scenario…
Gels made of telechelic polymers connected by reversible crosslinkers are a versatile design platform for biocompatible viscoelastic materials. Their linear response to a step strain displays a fast, near-exponential relaxation when using…
Restricting the number of attractive physical "bonds" that can form between particles in a fluid suppresses the usual demixing phase transition to very low particle concentrations, allowing for the formation of open, percolated, and…
We clarify the relationship between freezing, melting, and the onset of glassy dynamics in a prototypical glass-forming mixture model. Our starting point is a precise operational definition of the onset of glassiness, as expressed by the…
Colloidal nanocrystal gels can be assembled using a difunctional "linker" molecule to mediate bonding between nanocrystals. The conditions for gelation and the structure of the gel are controlled macroscopically by the linker concentration…
We represent a theory of polymer gelation as an analogue of liquid-glass transition in which elastic fields of stress and strain shear components appear spontaneously as a consequence of the cross-linking of macromolecules. This…
When an ensemble of particles interact hydrodynamically, they generically display large-scale transient structures such as swirls in sedimenting particles [1], or colloidal strings in sheared suspensions [2]. Understanding these…
Lateral microsegregation in a monolayer of a binary mixture of particles or macromolecules is studied by MD simulations in a generic model with the interacting potentials inspired by effective interactions in biological or soft-matter…
A general theory has been developed for a polydisperse semi-flexible multi-block copolymer melt. Using the Bawendi-Freed approach to model semi-flexible chains an expression for the Landau free energy is derived in the weak segregation…
Low-density "equilibrium" gels that consist of a percolated, kinetically arrested network of colloidal particles and are resilient to aging can be fabricated by restricting the number of effective bonds that form between the colloids.…
We study the effect of a random Flory-Huggins parameter in a symmetric diblock copolymer melt which is expected to occur in a copolymer where one block is near its structural glass transition. In the clean limit the microphase segregation…
Glassy materials yield under large external mechanical solicitations. Under oscillatory shear, yielding shows a well-known rheological fingerprint, common to samples with widely different microstructures. At the microscale, this corresponds…
Steady state dynamics of clustering, long range order, and inelastic collapse are experimentally observed in vertically shaken granular monolayers. At large vibration amplitudes, particle correlations show only short range order like…
We develop a new analytic approach for the study of lattice heteropolymers, and apply it to copolymers with correlated Markovian sequences. According to our analysis, heteropolymers present three different dense phases depending upon the…
We present dynamic light scattering (DLS) measurements of soft polymethyl-methacrylate (PMMA) and polyacrylamide(PA) polymer gels prepared with trapped bodies (latex spheres or maghemite nanoparticles). We show that the anomalous…
In a preceding paper, Mukhopadhyay and I studied the diffusive motion of a tagged molecule in a heterogeneous glass-forming liquid at temperatures just above a glass transition. Among other features of this system, we postulated a relation…
We investigate the heterogeneous dynamics in a model, where chemical gelation and glass transition interplay, focusing on the dynamical susceptibility. Two independent mechanisms give raise to the correlations, which are manifested in the…
A large number (~10,000) of uniform stainless steel balls comprising less than one layer coverage on a vertically shaken plate provides a rich system for the study of excited granular media. Viewed from above, the horizontal motion in the…
We present computer simulations of concentrated solutions of unknotted nonconcatenated semiflexible ring polymers. Unlike in their flexible counterparts, shrinking involves a strong energetic penalty, favoring interpenetration and…