Search results for "Soft matter"
showing 10 items of 54 documents
Comparing equilibration schemes of high-molecular-weight polymer melts with topological indicators.
2021
Abstract Recent theoretical studies have demonstrated that the behaviour of molecular knots is a sensitive indicator of polymer structure. Here, we use knots to verify the ability of two state-of-the-art algorithms—configuration assembly and hierarchical backmapping—to equilibrate high-molecular-weight (MW) polymer melts. Specifically, we consider melts with MWs equivalent to several tens of entanglement lengths and various chain flexibilities, generated with both strategies. We compare their unknotting probability, unknotting length, knot spectra, and knot length distributions. The excellent agreement between the two independent methods with respect to knotting properties provides an addit…
Field-induced ordering phenomena and non-local elastic compliance in two-dimensional colloidal crystals
2008
Ordering phenomena in colloidal dispersions exposed to external one-dimensional, periodic fields or under confinement are studied systematically by Monte Carlo computer simulations. Such systems are useful models for the study of monolayers on a substrate. We find that the interaction with a substrate potential completely changes the miscibility of a binary, hard disc mixture at low external field amplitudes. The underlying ordering mechanisms leading to this laser-induced de-mixing differ, depending on which components interact with the substrate potential. Generic effects of confinement on crystalline order in two dimensions are studied in a model system of point particles interacting via…
Thermochromic Meltable Materials with Reverse Spin Transition Controlled by Chemical Design
2020
International audience; We report a series of meltable FeII complexes, which, depending on the length of aliphatic chains, display abrupt forward low‐spin to high‐spin transition or unprecedented melting‐triggered reverse high‐spin to low‐spin transition on temperature rise. The reverse spin transition is perfectly reproducible on thermal cycling and the obtained materials are easily processable in the form of thin film owing to their soft‐matter nature. We found that the discovered approach represents a potentially generalizable new avenue to control both the location in temperature and the direction of the spin transition in meltable compounds.
Confinement effects on phase behavior of soft matter systems.
2008
When systems that can undergo phase separation between two coexisting phases in the bulk are confined in thin film geometry between parallel walls, the phase behavior can be profoundly modified. These phenomena shall be described and exemplified by computer simulations of the Asakura-Oosawa model for colloid-polymer mixtures, but applications to other soft matter systems (e.g. confined polymer blends) will also be mentioned. Typically a wall will prefer one of the phases, and hence the composition of the system in the direction perpendicular to the walls will not be homogeneous. If both walls are of the same kind, this effect leads to a distortion of the phase diagram of the system in thin …
Meltable Spin Transition Molecular Materials with Tunable Tc and Hysteresis Loop Width.
2015
Herein, we report a way to achieve abrupt high-spin to low-spin transition with controllable transition temperature and hysteresis width, relying not on solid-state cooperative interactions, but utilizing coherency between phase and spin transitions in neutral FeII meltable complexes
Probing light-induced conformational transitions in bacterial photosynthetic reaction centers embedded in trehalose-water amorphous matrices.
2004
Abstract The coupling between electron transfer and protein dynamics has been studied in photosynthetic reaction centers (RC) from Rhodobacter sphaeroides by embedding the protein into room temperature solid trehalose–water matrices. Electron transfer kinetics from the primary quinone acceptor (Q A − ) to the photoxidized donor (P + ) were measured as a function of the duration of photoexcitation from 20 ns (laser flash) to more than 1 min. Decreasing the water content of the matrix down to ≈5×10 3 water molecules per RC causes a reversible four-times acceleration of P + Q A − recombination after the laser pulse. By comparing the broadly distributed kinetics observed under these conditions …
Ground states of ultrasoft particles with attractions: a genetic algorithm approach
2009
International audience; We analyze in detail the ground-state structure of model systems of athermal star polymers with an additional, tunable attraction that may result from dispersion or depletion forces. To perform a free, unbiased search in the space spanned by the crystal parameters, we employ genetic algorithms, which are enhanced with respect to previous versions in their ability to find stable structures that occupy very narrow basins of attraction in the energy landscape. Application of this method brings about a very large variety of ground states for star polymers with attractions, in particular for the case of intermediate functionalities and strong, short-range attractive force…
Colloidal and molecular electro-optics
2010
The Kerr effect, also known as the quadratic electro-optic effect, was discovered more than a hundred years ago by John Kerr, a Scottish physicist [1]. It describes the change in the refractive index of a material in response to an applied electric field. Around 1950 its application swayed from simple to complex fluids. A strong contribution was made through a number of seminal papers by the French polymer scientist H Benoit [2–4]. These and others initiated wide interest from researchers working on macromolecular solutions or colloidal dispersions. Experimental activities were further boosted by the advent of the laser and theoretical approaches strongly drew from growing computer power. U…
Dynamical precursor of nematic order in a dense fluid of hard ellipsoids of revolution
2004
We investigate hard ellipsoids of revolution in a parameter regime where no long range nematic order is present but already finite size domains are formed which show orientational order. Domain formation leads to a substantial slowing down of a collective rotational mode which separates well from the usual microscopic frequency regime. A dynamic coupling of this particular mode into all other modes provides a general mechanism which explains an excess peak in spectra of molecular fluids. Using molecular dynamics simulation on up to 4096 particles and on solving the molecular mode coupling equation we investigate dynamic properties of the peak and prove its orientational origin.
Generalized Langevin dynamics: construction and numerical integration of non-Markovian particle-based models.
2018
We propose a generalized Langevin dynamics (GLD) technique to construct non-Markovian particle-based coarse-grained models from fine-grained reference simulations and to efficiently integrate them. The proposed GLD model has the form of a discretized generalized Langevin equation with distance-dependent two-particle contributions to the self- and pair-memory kernels. The memory kernels are iteratively reconstructed from the dynamical correlation functions of an underlying fine-grained system. We develop a simulation algorithm for this class of non-Markovian models that scales linearly with the number of coarse-grained particles. Our GLD method is suitable for coarse-grained studies of syste…