Related papers: Formation of polymer brushes
Understanding how stick-slip dynamics manifests in diverse physical conditions is a crucial topic in tribology. Although it has been extensively studied in simple frictional configurations, the characterization of stick-slip behavior in…
We present a statistical mechanical study of stiff polymers, motivated by experiments on actin filaments and the considerable current interest in polymer networks. We obtain simple, approximate analytical forms for the force-extension…
We investigate the structure and dynamics of a hard colloid-star polymer mixture in the range of its arrested phase separation, where an incipient demixing transition is interfering with a nearby vitrification line, focusing on the protein…
Protein-mediated interactions are ubiquitous in the cellular environment, and particularly in the nucleus, where they are responsible for the structuring of chromatin. We show through molecular--dynamics simulations of a polymer surrounded…
We numerically examine the dynamics of a probe particle driven at a constant force through an assembly of particles with competing long-range repulsion and short-range attraction that forms a bubble or stripe state. In the bubble regime, we…
The organization of nano-particles inside grafted polymer layers is governed by the interplay of polymer-induced entropic interactions and the action of externally applied fields. Earlier work had shown that strong external forces can drive…
We carry out numerical simulations of vesicle formation based on the density functional theory for block copolymer solutions. It is shown by solving the time evolution equations for concentrations that a polymer vesicle is spontaneously…
We investigate the interaction energy between two colloidal particles on or immersed in nonadsorbing polymer brushes grafted onto the substrate as a function of the separation of the particles by use of self-consistent field theory…
We study analytically a model of a two dimensional, partially directed, flexible or semiflexible polymer, attached to an attractive wall which is perpendicular to the preferred direction. In addition, the polymer is stretched by an…
Elastic MicroPhase Separation (EMPS) provides a simple route to create soft materials with homogeneous microstructures by leveraging the supersaturation of crosslinked polymer networks with liquids. At low supersaturation, network…
Because of the enormous range of time and space scales involved in dislocation dynamics, plastic modeling at macroscale requires a continuous formulation. In this paper, we present a rigorous formulation of the transition between the…
We introduce a simple dynamical rule in which each particle locates a particle that is farthest from it and moves towards it. Repeated application of this algorithm results in the formation of unusual dynamical patterns: during the process…
A lattice model for a symmetrical copolymer "bottle brush" molecule, where two types (A,B) of flexible side chains are grafted with one chain end to a rigid backbone, is studied by a variant of the pruned-enriched Rosenbluth method (PERM),…
Many types of mammalian cells exert active contractile forces and mechanically deform their elastic substrate, to accomplish biological functions such as cell migration. These substrate deformations provide a mechanism by which cells can…
Inspired by recent experiments on chromosomal dynamics, we introduce an exactly solvable model for the interaction between a flexible polymer and a set of motor-like enzymes. The enzymes can bind and unbind to specific sites of the polymer…
The interaction between polymer brush and colloidal particles has been intensively studied in the last two decades. Here we consider a flat chain-grafted substrate immersed in a bath of active particles. Simulations show that an increase in…
Using computer simulations, we study the dynamic arrest in a schematic model of colloid-polymer mixtures combining short-ranged attractions with long-ranged repulsions. The arrested gel is a dilute rigid network of colloidal particles…
We consider the micellization of block copolymers in solution, employing self consistent field theory with an additional constraint that permits the examination of intermediate structures. From the information for an isolated micelle…
Predicting the macroscopic mechanical behavior of polymeric materials from the micro-structural features has remained a challenge for decades. Existing theoretical models often fail to accurately capture the experimental data, due to…
Materials are often heterogeneous at various length scales, with variations in grain structure, defects, and composition which has a strong influence on the emergent macroscopic plastic behavior. In particular, heterogeneities lead to…