Related papers: Glassy correlations and microstructures in randoml…
A spontaneous buckling transition in thin layers of monodomain nematic liquid crystalline gel was observed by polarized light microscopy. The coupling between the orientational ordering of liquid crystalline solvent and the translational…
Glass-forming liquids display strong fluctuations -- dynamical heterogeneities -- near their glass transition. By numerically simulating a binary Weeks-Chandler-Andersen liquid and varying both temperature and timescale, we investigate the…
In these lectures I discuss long-scale properties of fluctuating polymerized membranes in the presence of network anisotropy and random heterogeneities. Amazingly, even infinitesimal amount of these seemingly innocuous but physically…
The interaction-site-density-fluctuation correlators, the dipole-relaxation functions, and the mean-squared displacements of a system of symmetric dumbbells of fused hard spheres are calculated for two representative elongations of the…
In this work, we report our results on the phase transition of a flexible homopolymer from a stretched chain to a compact globule. The Wang-landau method is used to study the thermodynamic properties of a the chain up to 512 monomers. We…
We study phase separation and transient gelation in a mixture consisting of polydisperse colloids and non-adsorbing polymers, where the ratio of the average size of the polymer to that of the colloid is approximately 0.063. Unlike what has…
Via large-scale molecular dynamics simulations, we observe the melting of a topological glass of stiff ring polymers by incorporating flexible ring polymers, along an isobaric path. As more flexible ring polymers are introduced, cluster…
We study creep flow and yielding of particulate depletion gels under constant shear stress, combining data on different length and time scales. We characterise the breakage of meso-scale strands in the gel. Breakage events are distributed…
Cooperative events requiring anomalously large fluctuations are a defining characteristic for the onset of glassy relaxation across many materials. The importance of such intermittent events has been noted in systems as diverse as…
An equilibrated model glass-forming liquid is studied by mapping successive configurations produced by molecular dynamics simulation onto a time series of inherent structures (local minima in the potential energy). Using this ``inherent…
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…
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…
We present molecular dynamics (MD) simulations results for dense fluids of ultrasoft, fully-penetrable particles. These are a binary mixture and a polydisperse system of particles interacting via the generalized exponential model, which is…
We assess the validity of "microscopic" approaches of glass-forming liquids based on the sole k nowledge of the static pair density correlations. To do so we apply them to a benchmark provided by two liquid models that share very similar…
We present a model of polymer growth and diffusion with frustration mechanisms for density increase and with diffusion rates of Arrhenius form with mass-dependent energy barriers Gamma(m) ~ (m-1)^gamma. It shows non-universal logarithmic…
An appropriate model for the random energy landscape in organic glasses is a spatially correlated Gaussian field, generated by randomly located and oriented dipoles and quadrupoles. Correlation properties of energetic disorder directly…
The process of homogeneous crystal nucleation has been considered in a model liquid, where the interparticle interaction is described by a short-range spherical oscillatory potential. Mechanisms of initiating structural ordering in the…
The problems of the intermediate-range atomic structure of glasses and of the mechanism for the glass transition are approached from the low-temperature end in terms of a scenario for the atomic organization that justifies the use of an…
Since the structural transformations observed in water-ethanol binary mixtures are apparently driven by relatively weak intermolecular forces (like hydrophobicity and hydrogen bonding) that often cooperate to form self assembled structures,…
Reversible crosslinking is a design paradigm for polymeric materials, wherein they are microscopically reinforced with chemical species that form transient crosslinks between the polymer chains. Besides the potential for self-healing,…