Related papers: Heterogeneous diffusion in a reversible gel
We present an extensive experimental study of mode-I, steady, slow crack dynamics in gelatin gels. Taking advantage of the sensitivity of the elastic stiffness to gel composition and history we confirm and extend the model for fracture of…
Our lives are surrounded by a rich assortment of disordered materials. In particular, glasses are well known as dense, amorphous materials, whereas gels exist in low-density, disordered states. Recent progress has provided a significant…
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…
We combine the hyper-netted chain approximation of liquid state theory with the mode-coupling theory of the glass transition to analyze the structure and dynamics of soft spheres interacting via harmonic repulsion. We determine the locus of…
We characterize the mechanical recovery of compliant silicone gels following adhesive contact failure. We establish broad, stable adhesive contacts between rigid microspheres and soft gels, then stretch the gels to large deformations by…
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…
Equilibrium properties of hydrogen-helium mixtures under thermodynamic conditions found in the interior of giant gas planets are studied by means of density functional theory molecular dynamics simulations. Special emphasis is placed on the…
We study the thermodynamics of binary mixtures with the volume fraction of the minority component less than the amount required to form a flat interface and show that the surface tension dominated equilibrium phase of the mixture forms a…
The cytosol state in living cell is treated as homogeneous phase equilibrium with a special feature: the pressure of one phase is positive and the pressure of the other is negative. From this point of view the cytosol is neither solution…
The glass transition refers to the non-equilibrium process by which an equilibrium liquid is transformed to a non-equilibrium disordered solid, or vice versa. Associated response functions, such as heat capacities, are markedly different on…
We introduce a simple model, a binary mixture of patchy particles, which has been designed to form a gel upon heating. Due to the specific nature of the particle interactions, notably the number and geometry of the patches as well as their…
Thermo-responsive hydrogels are smart materials that rapidly switch between hydrophilic (swollen) and hydrophobic (shrunken) states when heated past a threshold temperature, resulting in order-of-magnitude changes in gel volume. Modelling…
Liquid-gas phase coexistence in a boundary-driven diffusive system is studied by analyzing fluctuating hydrodynamics of a density field defined on a one-dimensional lattice with a space interval $\Lambda$. When an interface width $\ell$ is…
It is known that homogeneous distribution of particles in Coulomb-like systems can be unstable, and spatially inhomogeneous structures can be formed. A simple method for describing such inhomogeneous systems and obtaining spacial…
In models of Pt 111 and Pt 100 surfaces in water, motions of molecules in the first hydration layer are spatially and temporally correlated. To interpret these collective motions, we apply quantitative measures of dynamic heterogeneity that…
Glass-like materials are nonequilibrium systems where the relaxation time may exceed reasonable time scales of observations. In the present paper a dynamic percolation model is introduced in order to explain the principal properties of…
Recent work has demonstrated the strong qualitative differences between the dynamics near a glass transition driven by short-ranged repulsion and one governed by short-ranged attraction. Here, we study in detail the behavior of non-linear,…
We consider the derivation and numerical solution of the flow of passive and active polar liquid crystals, whose molecular orientation is subjected to a tangential anchoring on an evolving curved surface. The underlying passive model is a…
We conduct a numerical study of the dynamical behavior of a system of three-dimensional crosses, particles that consist of three mutually perpendicular line segments rigidly joined at their midpoints. In an earlier study [W. van Ketel et…
This article discusses recent attempts to provide a deeper understanding of the thermoreversible "gel" state of colloidal matter and to unravel the analogies between gels at the colloidal level and gels at the molecular level, commonly…