Related papers: Microgels and fractal structures at interfaces and…
Ferrogels and magnetic elastomers differentiate themselves from other materials by their unique capability of reversibly changing shape and mechanical properties under the influence of an external magnetic field. A crucial issue in the…
Thin films made of deformable micro- and nano-units, such as biological membranes, polymer interfaces, and particle-laden liquid surfaces, exhibit a complex behavior during drying, with consequences for various applications like wound…
From biological tissues to layers of paint, macroscopic non-porous materials with the capacity to swell when brought in contact with an appropriate solvent are ubiquitous. Here, we study experimentally and theoretically one of the…
Monolayers of soft colloidal particles confined at fluid interfaces have been attracting increasing interest for fundamental studies and applications alike. However, establishing the relation between their internal architecture, which is…
We present a numerical study of the structural correlations associated to gas adsorption/desorption in silica aerogels in order to provide a theoretical interpretation of scattering experiments. Following our earlier work, we use a…
The close packing density of log-normal and bimodal distributed, surface-adsorbed particles or discs in 2D is studied by numerical simulation. For small spread in particle size, the system orders in a polycrystalline structure of hexagonal…
The behaviour of rod-coil diblock copolymers close to a surface is discussed by using extended scaling methods. The copolymers are immersed in selective solvent such that the rods are likely to aggregate to gain energy. The rods are assumed…
In this article, we analyze different factors that affect the diffusion behavior of small tracer particles (as they are used e.g.in fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS)) in the polymer network of a hydrogel and perform simulations of…
The properties of polymer composites with nanofiller particles change drastically above a critical filler density known as the percolation threshold. Real nanofillers, such as graphene flakes and cellulose nanocrystals, are not idealized…
A simple scaling theory for the sintering of fractal aerogels is presented. The densification at small scales is described by an increase of the lower cut-off length $a$ accompanied by a decrease of the upper cut-off length $\xi$, in order…
We study swelling and structural properties of ionic microgel suspensions within a comprehensive coarse-grained model that combines the polymeric and colloidal natures of microgels as permeable, compressible, charged spheres governed by…
Tribological phenomena are governed by combined effects of material properties, topology and surface-chemistry. We study the interplay of multiscale surface structures with molecular-scale interactions towards interpreting static frictional…
The behavior of colloidal particles with a hard core and a soft shell has attracted the attention for researchers in the physical-chemistry interface not only due the large number of applications, but due the unique properties of these…
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,…
The macroscopic mechanical properties of densely packed coagulated colloidal particle gels strongly depend on the local arrangement of the powder particles on length scales of a few particle diameters. Heterogeneous microstructures exhibit…
Hydrogel consists of a crosslinked polymer matrix imbibed with a solvent such as water at volume fractions that can exceed 90\%. They are important in many scientific and engineering applications due to their tunable physiochemical…
A computer simulation technique, suited to replicate real adsorption experiments, was applied to pure simulated silica in order to gain insight into the fractal regime of its surface. The previously reported experimental fractal dimension…
Differential shrinkage in particulate quasi-brittle materials causes microcracking which reduces durability in these materials by increasing their mass transport properties. A hydro-mechanical three-dimensional periodic network approach was…
We report on the frictional properties of thin ($\approx \mu m$) poly(dimethylacrylamide) hydrogel films within contacts with spherical silica probes. In order to focus on the contribution to friction of interfacial dissipation, a dedicated…
Hydrogels have had a profound impact in the fields of tissue engineering, drug delivery, and materials science as a whole. Due to the network architecture of these materials, imbibement with water often results in uniform swelling and…