Search results for " Soft"
showing 10 items of 1710 documents
Electrostatic interactions in critical solvents
2011
The subtle interplay between critical phenomena and electrostatics is investigated by considering the effective force acting on two parallel walls confining a near-critical binary liquid mixture with added salt. The ion-solvent coupling can turn a non-critical repulsive electrostatic force into an attractive one upon approaching the critical point. However, the effective force is eventually dominated by the critical Casimir effect, the universal properties of which are not altered by the presence of salt. This observation allows a consistent interpretation of recent experimental data.
Dynamic mode rheology of cement and tricalcium silicate pastes from mixing to setting
2001
Dynamic mode rheometry was used to study the evolution of the structure of cement and pure tricalcium silicate pastes from mixing up to setting and even after setting, together with the nature of the forces responsible for the mechanical properties of the pastes. A special mixer-type tool was used to study rheology during the very first minutes following the end of mixing, which are out of reach with classical tools. Both kinds of pastes have the same behavior. It was found that the main evolution of the structure of the pastes occurs during the very first minutes following the end of mixing, while there is no change in interparticular forces up to setting and even a few hours later. Settin…
True vertical validation in facial orthognathic surgery planning
2013
Objectives: To validate the effectiveness of the original standards of True Vertical (TV) Subnasal Line in orthognatic surgery planning. The present study evaluates the changes occurring in patients with skeletal Class II alterations programmed for orthognathic surgery with a view to improving their facial profile. Study design: We showed a series of black profiles (composed by a first control group of subjects with normal occlusion, and another two additional groups comprised patients before –Group 2- and after orthognatic surgical correction of Class II malocclusion -Group 3-) for three groups of observers (orthodontists, surgeons and laypeople). The facial images became black silhouettes…
On the role of interfacial hydrogen bonds in "on-water" catalysis.
2014
Numerous experiments have demonstrated that many classes of organic reactions exhibit increased reaction rates when performed in heterogeneous water emulsions. Despite enormous practical importance of the observed "on-water" catalytic effect and several mechanistic studies, its microscopic origins remains unclear. In this work, the second generation Car-Parrinello molecular dynamics method is extended to self-consistent charge density-functional based tight-binding in order to study "on-water" catalysis of the Diels-Alder reaction between dimethyl azodicarboxylate and quadricyclane. We find that the stabilization of the transition state by dangling hydrogen bonds exposed at the aqueous inte…
Extraordinary Electrical Conductance of Non-conducting Polymers Under Vibrational Strong Coupling
2023
Achieving vibrational mode selectivity to control molecular properties is a challenging task that has become greatly facilitated by vibrational strong coupling. Here we show that strongly coupling the vibrational transitions of polystyrene (PS) and poly (benzyl-methacrylate) (PBMA) to the vacuum electromagnetic field of the cavity enhances the electrical conductance by several orders of magnitude. Remarkably, the extraordinary enhancement of electrical conductance in PS is mode-selective to the vibrational strong coupling (VSC) of the aromatic ring out-of-plane bending transitions corresponding to B2 symmetry. The delocalized hybrid light-matter states formed under VSC could promote extende…
Ab-Initio Molecular Dynamics
2012
Computer simulation methods, such as Monte Carlo or Molecular Dynamics, are very powerful computational techniques that provide detailed and essentially exact information on classical many-body problems. With the advent of ab-initio molecular dynamics, where the forces are computed on-the-fly by accurate electronic structure calculations, the scope of either method has been greatly extended. This new approach, which unifies Newton's and Schr\"odinger's equations, allows for complex simulations without relying on any adjustable parameter. This review is intended to outline the basic principles as well as a survey of the field. Beginning with the derivation of Born-Oppenheimer molecular dynam…
Flows and mixing in channels with misaligned superhydrophobic walls.
2014
Aligned superhydrophobic surfaces with the same texture orientation reduce drag in the channel and generate secondary flows transverse to the direction of the applied pressure gradient. Here we show that a transverse shear can be easily generated by using superhydrophobic channels with misaligned textured surfaces. We propose a general theoretical approach to quantify this transverse flow by introducing the concept of an effective shear tensor. To illustrate its use, we present approximate theoretical solutions and Dissipative Particle Dynamics simulations for striped superhydrophobic channels. Our results demonstrate that the transverse shear leads to complex flow patterns, which provide a…
Salt-induced microheterogeneities in binary liquid mixtures
2017
The salt-induced microheterogeneity (MH) formation in binary liquid mixtures is studied by small-angle x-ray scattering (SAXS) and liquid state theory. Previous experiments have shown that this phenomenon occurs for antagonistic salts, whose cations and anions prefer different components of the solvent mixture. However, so far the precise mechanism leading to the characteristic length scale of MHs has remained unclear. Here, it is shown that MHs can be generated by the competition of short-ranged interactions and long-ranged monopole-dipole interactions. The experimental SAXS patterns can be reproduced quantitatively by fitting to the derived correlation functions without assuming any speci…
On the calculation of potential of mean force between atomistic nanoparticles
2018
We study the potential of mean force (PMF) between atomistic silica and gold nanoparticles in the vacuum by using molecular dynamics simulations. Such an investigation is devised in order to fully characterize the effective interactions between atomistic nanoparticles, a crucial step to describe the PMF in high-density coarse-grained polymer nanocomposites. In our study, we first investigate the behavior of silica nanoparticles, considering cases corresponding to different particle sizes and assessing results against an analytic theory developed by Hamaker for a system of Lennard-Jones interacting particles [H. C. Hamaker, Physica A, 1937, 4, 1058]. Once validated the procedure, we calculat…
Nuclear quantum effects in liquid water from path-integral simulations using anab initioforce-matching approach
2014
We have applied path integral simulations, in combination with new ab initio based water potentials, to investigate nuclear quantum effects in liquid water. Because direct ab initio path integral simulations are computationally expensive, a flexible water model is parameterized by force-matching to density functional theory-based molecular dynamics simulations. The resulting effective potentials provide an inexpensive replacement for direct ab inito molecular dynamics simulations and allow efficient simulation of nuclear quantum effects. Static and dynamic properties of liquid water at ambient conditions are presented and the role of nuclear quantum effects, exchange-correlation functionals…