Related papers: Surface-induced layer formation in polyelectrolyte…
In the deformation of layered materials such as geological strata, or stacks of paper, mechanical properties compete with the geometry of layering. Smooth, rounded corners lead to voids between the layers, while close packing of the layers…
When a particle contacts a surface of another material, it is commonly believed that the particle acquires an impact charge that scales inversely with its pre-impact charge and whose polarity is set by the materials. We show that this…
Surfaces of ionic solids interacting with an ionic solution can build up charge by exchange of ions. The surface charge is compensated by a strip of excess charge at the border of the electrolyte forming an electric double layer. These…
We investigate active electrolytes within the mean-field level of description. The focus is on how the double-layer structure of passive, thermalized charges is affected by active dynamics of all constituting ions. One feature of active…
There is increasing evidence that entropy can induce microphase separation in binary fluid mixtures interacting through hard particle potentials. One such phase consists of alternating two dimensional liquid-like layers of rods and spheres.…
Mean-field theory and scaling arguments are presented to model polyelectrolyte adsorption from semi-dilute solutions onto charged surfaces. Using numerical solutions of the mean-field equations, we show that adsorption exists only for…
Complexation of a long flexible polyelectrolyte (PE) molecule with oppositely charged spherical particles such as colloids, micelles, or globular proteins in a salty water solution is studied. PE binds spheres winding around them, while…
We investigate, within a local density functional theory formalism, the interactions between like-charged polyions immersed in a confined electrolyte. We obtain a simple condition for a repulsive effective pair potential, that can be…
A comparative study is performed to explore the periodic structure formation upon intense femtosecond pulsed irradiation of dielectrics with radially and azimuthally polarised beams. Laser conditions have been selected appropriately to…
Electric double layers (EDL) with counterions only, say electrons with the elementary charge $-e$, in thermal equilibrium at the inverse temperature $\beta$ are considered. In particular, we study the effect of the surface charge modulation…
The screening of an individual low-dimensional object can be strongly influenced by the objects nearby. We propose that such environment's influence can be absorbed into an effective polarizability, instead of its intrinsic polarizability.…
Complexation in symmetric solutions of oppositely charged polyelectrolytes is studied theoretically. We include polyion crosslinking due to formation of thermoreversible ionic pairs. The electrostatic free energy is calculated within the…
We present a simulation method to study electrolyte solutions in a dielectric slab geometry using a modified 3D Ewald summation. The method is fast and easy to implement, allowing us to rapidly resum an infinite series of image charges. In…
We show that when particles are suspended in an electrolyte confined between corrugated charged surfaces, electrokinetic flows lead to a new set of phenomena such as particle separation, mixing for low-Reynolds micro- and nano-metric…
The charge state of dielectric surfaces in aqueous environments is of fundamental and technological importance. Here, we study the influence of dissolved molecular CO$_2$ on the charging of three, chemically different surfaces (SiO$_2$,…
Tree frogs are able take advantage of an interconnected network of epithelial cells in their toe pads to modulate their adhesion to surfaces under dry, wet, and flooded environments. It has been hypothesized that these interconnected…
The charge and potential distributions for insulating particles approaching a substrate with regular insulating structures are studied by particle-in-cell numerical simulations. An elongated particle and substrate with elongated structures…
When a plasma sheath forms next to a dielectric wall, material properties determine electron absorption and reflection from the surface, impacting the sheath formation and structure. The low energy regime of this interaction is often not…
Aggregation of like-charged polymers is widely observed in biological and soft matter systems. In many systems, bundles are formed when a short-range attraction of diverse physical origin like charge-bridging, hydrogen-bonding or…
Electron sheaths form near the surface of objects biased more positive than the plasma potential, such as in the electron saturation region of a Langmuir probe trace. Generally, the formation of electron sheaths requires that the…