Related papers: Length scale dependent relaxation in colloidal gel…
The swelling dynamics of polymer gels are characterized by the (collective) diffusion coefficient $D$ of the polymer network. Here, we measure the temperature dependence of $D$ of polymer gels with controlled homogeneous network structures…
Within the mode-coupling theory (MCT) for the evolution of structural relaxation in glass-forming liquids, correlation functions and susceptibility spectra are calculated characterizing the rotational dynamics of a top-down symmetric…
Using Brownian dynamics simulations we study gel-forming colloid-polymer mixtures. The focus of this article lies on the differences of dense and dilute gel networks in terms of structure formation both on a local and a global level. We…
The wetting of soft elastic substrates exhibits many features that have no counterpart on rigid surfaces. Modelling the detailed elastocapillary interactions is challenging, and has so far been limited to single contact lines or single…
One of the hallmarks of molecular dynamics in deeply supercooled liquids is the non-exponential character of the relaxation functions. It has been a long standing issue if 'universal' features govern the lineshape of glassy dynamics…
Slow dynamics in a fluid are studied in one of the most basic systems possible: polydisperse hard spheres. Monodisperse hard spheres cannot be studied as the slow down in dynamics as the density is increased is preempted by crystallisation.…
In this paper we use molecular dynamics (MD) to answer a classical question: how does the surface tension on a liquid/gas interface appear? After defining surface tension from the first principles and performing several consistency checks,…
We have measured depolarized light scattering in liquid benzene over the whole accessible temperature range and over four decades in frequency. Between 40 and 180 GHz we find a susceptibility peak due to structural relaxation. This peak…
It has been demonstrated recently that supercooled liquids sharing simple structural features (e.g. pair distribution functions) may exhibit strikingly distinct dynamical behavior. Here we show that a more subtle structural feature…
Computer simulations were used to study the gel transition occurring in colloidal systems with short range attractions. A colloid-polymer mixture was modelled and the results were compared with mode coupling theory expectations and with the…
We exploit the controlled drying of millimeter-sized gel beads to investigate isotropic compression of colloidal fractal gels. Using a custom dynamic light scattering setup, we demonstrate that stresses imposed by drying on the bead surface…
We present simulation results addressing the phenomena of colloidal gelation induced by attractive interactions. The liquid-gas transition is prevented by the glass arrest at high enough attraction strength, resulting in a colloidal gel.…
Colloidal gels constitute an important class of materials found in many contexts and with a wide range of applications. Yet as matter far from equilibrium, gels exhibit a variety of time-dependent behaviours, which can be perplexing, such…
Self-mated hydrogel contacts show extremely small friction coefficients at low loads but a distinct velocity dependence. Here we combine mesoscopic simulations and experiments to test the polymer-relaxation hypothesis for this velocity…
A discrete--dynamics model, which is specified solely in terms of the system's equilibrium structure, is defined for the density correlators of a simple fluid. This model yields results for the evolution of glassy dynamics which are…
Using molecular dynamics simulations we investigate the relaxation dynamics of a supercooled liquid close to a rough as well as close to a smooth wall. For the former situation the relaxation times increase strongly with decreasing distance…
Colloidal gels formed by strongly attractive particles at low particle volume fractions are composed of space-spanning networks of uniformly sized clusters. We study the thermal fluctuations of the clusters using differential dynamic…
We investigate the slow dynamics in gelling systems by means of MonteCarlo simulations on the cubic lattice of a minimal statistical mechanics model. By opportunely varying some model parameter we are able to describe a crossover from the…
Within the mode-coupling theory for ideal glass-transitions, the mean-squared displacement and the correlation function for density fluctuations are evaluated for a colloidal liquid of particles interacting with a square-well potential for…
Colloidal gels have unique mechanical and transport properties that stem from their bicontinous nature, in which a colloidal network is intertwined with a viscous solvent, and have found numerous applications in foods, cosmetics,…