Related papers: Pulling adsorbed polymers from surfaces with the A…
High molecular weight polymer solutions have a powerful tendency to deposit adsorbed layers when exposed to even mildly attractive surfaces. The equilibrium properties of these dense interfacial layers have been extensively studied…
The force-assisted desorption kinetics of a macromolecule from adhesive surface is studied theoretically, using the notion of tensile (Pincus) blobs, as well as by means of Monte-Carlo (MC) and Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulations. We show…
Forced desorption of a semiflexible polymer chain on a solid substrate is theoretically investigated. The pulling force versus displacement is studied for different adsorption energy and persistence length P. It is found that the…
We consider self-avoiding lattice polygons, in the hypercubic lattice, as a model of a ring polymer adsorbed at a surface and either being desorbed by the action of a force, or pushed towards the surface. We show that, when there is no…
The static friction between crystalline surfaces separated by a molecularly thin layer of adsorbed molecules is calculated using molecular dynamics simulations. These molecules naturally lead to a finite static friction that is consistent…
Contacts between particles in dense, sheared suspensions are believed to underpin much of their rheology. Roughness and adhesion are known to constrain the relative motion of particles, and thus globally affect the shear response, but an…
We study the influence of the surface energy and contamination films on rubber adhesion and sliding friction. We find that there is a transfer of molecules from the rubber to the substrate which reduces the work of adhesion and makes the…
Predicting the large-amplitude deformations of thin elastic sheets is difficult due to the complications of self-contact, geometric nonlinearities, and a multitude of low-lying energy states. We study a simple two-dimensional setting where…
We analyze the structural behavior of a single polymer chain grafted to an attractive, flexible surface. Our model is composed of a coarse-grained bead-and-spring polymer and a tethered membrane. By means of extensive parallel tempering…
We consider directed semiflexible polymers embedded in a fluctuating surface which is governed by either surface tension or bending rigidity. The attractive interactions induced by the fluctuations of the surface reduce the rigidity of the…
We present results from molecular dynamics simulations of a spherically confined neutral polymer in the presence of crowding agents, studying polymer shapes and conformations as a function of the confining potential, solvent quality and the…
Adhesive peeling of a thin elastic film from a substrate is a classic problem in mechanics. However, many of the investigations on this topic to date have focused on peeling from substrates with flat surfaces. In this paper, we study the…
The adsorption of a single multi-block $AB$-copolymer on a solid planar substrate is investigated by means of computer simulations and scaling analysis. It is shown that the problem can be mapped onto an effective homopolymer adsorption…
Using molecular dynamics (MD) we study the dependency of the contact mechanics on the sliding speed when an elastically soft slab (block) is sliding on a rigid substrate with a ${\rm sin} (q_0 x)$ surface height profile. The atoms on the…
We examine the phase transition of polymer adsorption as well as the underlying kinetics of polymer binding from dilute solutions on a structureless solid surface. The emphasis is put on the properties of regular multiblock copolymers,…
We report molecular dynamics simulation results on the equilibrium properties of polymer thin films adsorbed onto flat and curved substrates. We first systematically determine the contact angle of polymer droplets on flat substrates as a…
The folding vs. adsorption behaviour of a coarse-grained off-lattice protein model near an attractive surface is presented within the frame of a Multicanonical Monte Carlo simulations. In the polymer-surface model, the Lennard-Jones…
Soft particles can be better emulsifiers than hard particles because they stretch at fluid interfaces. This deformation can increase adsorption energies by orders of magnitude relative to rigid particles. The deformation of a particle at an…
Contact involving soft materials often combines dry adhesion, sliding friction, and large deformations. At the local level, these three aspects are rarely captured simultaneously, but included in the theoretical models by Mergel et al.…
Cellulose, as a naturally abundant and biocompatible material, is still gaining interest due to its high potential for functionalization. This makes cellulose a promising candidate for replacing plastics. Understanding how cellulose…