Soft Matter
Where physics meets chemistry meets biology for fundamental soft matter research.
Page
of 2
First published on the web: 28 Sep 2012
Levent Kubus, Hakan Erdogan, Erhan Piskin and Gokhan Demirel
Inspiration from natural designs offers opportunities to develop novel functional materials having unique properties.
Raghunath Chelakkot and Thomas Gruhn
The cluster size distributions, close to the percolation transition of cross-linker mediated percolation of filaments. Monte Carlo simulation studies indicate that percolation transition is weakly dependent on filament lengths.
Jie Jin, Mingming Zhang, Qingqing Xiong, Pingchuan Sun and Hanying Zhao
Polymeric micelles with reversible addition–fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) agent at the interfaces were prepared by click cross-linking reaction between dialkynetrithiocarbonate and the azide groups at the interfaces, and micelles with mixed coronal chains were prepared by in situ RAFT polymerization.
Corina Curschellas, Deniz Z. Gunes, Hélène Deyber, Brigitte Watzke, Erich Windhab and Hans Jörg Limbach
Coalescence reduces the time required to reach sufficient polyglycerol ester (PGE) coverage of bubbles, and appears to be key in generating stable foams. Due to the complex molecular structuring of PGE at the resulting air–water interfaces, the bubbles emerging from coalescence events exhibit remarkable interfacial characteristics.
Santi Prestipino, Cristina Speranza and Paolo V. Giaquinta
Two-fold number-density anomaly in a system of softly repulsive particles lying on an inert sphere.
First published on the web: 27 Sep 2012
Koki Yoshizawa, Nao Wakabayashi, Masakatsu Yonese, Junpei Yamanaka and C. Patrick Royall
We report that binary dispersions of like-charged colloidal particles with large charge asymmetry but similar size exhibit phase separation into crystal and fluid phases under very low salt conditions.
Yue Feng, Marc Taraban and Y. Bruce Yu
The elastic modulus G′ of a hydrogel increases with the logarithm of its ionic strength linearly.
Junlin Yan, Jing Liu, Ping Jing, Chengkun Xu, Jiamin Wu, Di Gao and Yu Fang
Stable and smart ionogels as created show reversible transition between ionogels and hydrogels, as well as magnetic field responsibility.
Yi Zhao, Katharina Landfester and Daniel Crespy
Outside – CO2 switchable surfactants, and inside – stimulus-responsive core in core–shell nanoparticles: long chain tertiary amines as versatile molecules for the preparation of smart dispersions.
First published on the web: 26 Sep 2012
Qingchao Hu, Yangyang Wang, Jiong Jia, Chunsheng Wang, Lei Feng, Renhao Dong, Xuan Sun and Jingcheng Hao
Soft chiral nanotubes were fabricated by chiral self-assembly from an achiral carboxylic-substituted amphiphilic azobenzene. The morphology and chirality of the nanotubes can be manipulated in response to light irradiation.
Takayuki Nonoyama, Hokuto Ogasawara, Masayoshi Tanaka, Masahiro Higuchi and Takatoshi Kinoshita
We performed amorphous calcium phosphate (ACP) and hydroxyapatite (HAp) mineralization in peptide hydrogels for the formation of a novel bone-filling material.
Kiyotaka Shigehara, Hiroki Kudoh, Saori Mori, Yoshiki Tamura, Akira Kakugo, Ryuzo Kawamura, Hidemitsu Furukawa, Jian Ping Gong, Hiroyasu Masunaga, Tomomi Masui, Satoshi Koizumi and Kazuhiro Shikinaka
In this paper, we studied the time evolution of microtubules ordering in the capillary cells by means of X-ray scattering, fluorescent microscopy, and polarized optical microscopy.
Shaden Jaradat, Matthew Harvey and Thomas A. Waigh
Polyacrylamide (PAM) solutions are Newtonian at low concentrations (c) and molecular weight (Mw), but show marked shear-banding or dominant wall-slip in certain regions of the c–Mw dynamic phase diagram. The dynamic phase diagram is based on velocity profiles obtained using optical coherence tomography velocimetry.
First published on the web: 25 Sep 2012
Daisuke Suzuki, Takeshi Kobayashi, Ryo Yoshida and Toshihiro Hirai
Autonomously oscillating soft actuators have been successfully obtained by assembling pre-existing microgel particles. In particular, the amplitude of the actuator’s oscillation can be controlled by selecting the types of microgel oscillations, i.e., swelling–deswelling oscillation of the microgels or dispersing–flocculating oscillation including swelling–deswelling oscillation of constituent microelements.
Giorgia D'Arrigo, Chiara Di Meo, Elisa Gaucci, Silvia Chichiarelli, Tommasina Coviello, Donatella Capitani, Franco Alhaique and Pietro Matricardi
The polysaccharide gellan, after a proper reduction of the molecular weight, has been derivatized with prednisolone or cholesterol by means of a short hydrocarbon chain. The novel polysaccharide systems form biocompatible nanohydrogels by self-assembly of polymer chains; the nanohydrogels can be exploited as drug delivery systems.
Pietro Tierno
Herein is presented a bottom-up strategy to assemble microscale colloids into paramagnetic dimers above a structured magnetic substrate. External fields modify the stray field of the film, allowing generation of several complex structures arising from the competition between dipolar interactions and magnetic pinning of the pattern.
Takuya Ohzono and Jun-ichi Fukuda
Temperature-dependent transition of frustrated nematic order and one-dimensional fluctuation of topological defects in microwrinkle grooves.
Meghan Hughes, Louise S. Birchall, Karim Zuberi, Lynsey A. Aitken, Sisir Debnath, Nadeem Javid and Rein V. Ulijn
We demonstrated the differential supramolecular organisation of similar self-assembling Fmoc-dipeptides with terminating hydrophilic amino acid residues.
First published on the web: 24 Sep 2012
Juny Koo and Claus Czeslik
The volume change of unfolding is reduced strongly, when the protein SNase is adsorbed on silica particles.
Michael J. Neeson, Rico F. Tabor, Franz Grieser, Raymond R. Dagastine and Derek Y. C. Chan
Compound sessile drops comprising 3 immiscible fluid phases on surfaces were created and the range of geometries available was explored through material choice.
First published on the web: 21 Sep 2012
Annie Colin, Todd M. Squires and Lyderic Bocquet
Techniques in microfluidics have played an increasing role in the study, science and engineering of soft matter. This special issue highlights many of the advantages and capabilities that microfluidics offer to the study of soft matter.
Anna Maria Talarico, Mauro Ghedini, Cesare Oliverio Rossi and Elisabeta Ildyko Szerb
In the search of new functional templating agents for the construction of mesostructured materials, the study of the behaviour in water and F127–water mixture of a new ionic Ir(III) liquid crystalline complex is reported.
Chiun Peng Lee, Hsin Yi Tsai and Mei Feng Lai
In this paper, we study the effect of magnetic disc arrays on the self-assembly of ferrofluid droplets.
Fumiya Nemoto, Isa Nishiyama, Yoichi Takanishi and Jun Yamamoto
A “self-alignment” method realizes the homogeneously oriented and strongly anchored nematic LC molecules without rubbing by the interface, having only an anchoring force without an aligning force preserving the rotational symmetry of the interface.
Jonathan S. Sander, Lucio Isa, Patrick A. Rühs, Peter Fischer and André R. Studart
Formation of a particle–polymer interfacial film on the surface of a particle-loaded toluene droplet during evaporation of toluene.
First published on the web: 20 Sep 2012
Ahmet Burak Uçar and Orlin D. Velev
We demonstrate a class of microfluidic materials filled with refractive-index-matched fluid, which can find applications as “smart” radiative energy-controlling windows.
Yongping Hou, Yuan Chen, Yan Xue, Lin Wang, Yongmei Zheng and Lei Jiang
The effective cooperation of multi-gradient and multi-scale spindle knots on a bioinspired fiber achieves a stronger water hanging ability and higher water collecting efficiency.
Davide C. E. Calzolari, Diego Pontoni, Moshe Deutsch, Harald Reichert and Jean Daillant
The average contact angle for nano-sized particles bound to deeply buried liquid–liquid interfaces is measured by state-of-the-art synchrotron X-ray techniques.
Zachary Grant Mills, Basat Aziz and Alexander Alexeev
Computer simulations show that actuated synthetic cilia can be used to regulate local heat transport in microfluidic channels.
Matthew J. Hamer, Jonathan A. D. Wattis and Richard S. Graham
We derive a simulation technique to project computationally expensive barrier crossing simulations onto an analytically tractable 1D system. Application of this technique to a model of flow-induced nucleation in polymers leads to an analytic method to compute the nucleation rate in this model.
Martine Philipp, Ulrich Müller, Ralitsa Aleksandrova, Roland Sanctuary, Peter Müller-Buschbaum and Jan K. Krüger
PNIPAM-rich agglomerates with gel-like mechanical consistency arising during the phase separation of aqueous PNIPAM solutions.
Wei Wang, Henrik Mauroy, Kaizheng Zhu, Kenneth D. Knudsen, Anna-Lena Kjøniksen, Bo Nyström and Sverre Arne Sande
At SDS concentrations higher than the critical aggregation concentration, SDS starts to co-assemble with the polyelectrolyte chains in the corona. At higher SDS concentration, the charges on the surface of the micelles will be neutralized; the hydrophobic coacervate moves to the core of the particle.
Saurabh Singh, Ann Junghans, Mary J. Waltman, Amber Nagy, Rashi Iyer and Jaroslaw Majewski
Using neutron reflectometry, polyelectrolyte multilayer films made by layer-by-layer deposition of strong polycations and polyanions have been characterized. The swelling and restructuring of these films, when exposed to different environments, have been investigated. Cytocompatibility of such films was also assessed, and it was established that these structures could be employed as a suitable support for cell growth.
ubor Fraštia, Andrew J. Archer and Uwe Thiele
When a film of a liquid suspension of nanoparticles or a polymer solution is deposited on a surface, it may dewet from the surface and as the solvent evaporates the solute particles/polymer can be deposited on the surface in regular line patterns.
Fengxiao Guo, Lars Schulte, Martin E. Vigild and Sokol Ndoni
Elastomeric templates with reversible bicontinuous gyroid porosity can be used as model systems for load and release of macromolecules.
First published on the web: 19 Sep 2012
Elisabetta A. Matsumoto and Randall D. Kamien
We explore a new class of patterns generated by mechanically compressing perforated cylindrical membranes and use them as a basis for a novel continuous feed method of nanoprinting.
M. Deniz Yilmaz and Jurriaan Huskens
Organization of molecules on surfaces is of utmost importance for the construction of functional materials.
Alexander Schulz, Marco Fioroni, Markus B. Linder, Andreas Nessel, Marco Bocola, Thomas Subkowski, Ulrich Schwaneberg, Alexander Böker and Francisco Rodríguez-Ropero
Hydrophobins, a class of highly surface active amphiphilic proteins, can stabilize various interfaces.
Jordi Morros, M. Rosa Infante and Ramon Pons
A sketch of the surface activity in relation to several aggregation levels found in hydrophobically modified inulin surfactants.
First published on the web: 18 Sep 2012
Catherine P. Whitby, Xun Bian and Rossen Sedev
The mechanism by which drops gently deposited on powder beds are coated with particles depends on the liquid surface tension.
First published on the web: 17 Sep 2012
Hiroaki Uchiyama, Daisuke Shimaoka and Hiromitsu Kozuka
Micron-scale stripe patterns are spontaneously formed on the organic–inorganic hybrid films at high coating temperatures over 40 °C during dip-coating.
Hiroyuki Yoshida, Genki Nakazawa, Kenji Tagashira and Masanori Ozaki
The authors report the self-alignment behaviour of rectangular, anisotropic micro-particles dispersed in a nematic liquid crystal host.
Lenin S. Shagolsem and Jens-Uwe Sommer
(a) Critical lines separating the “non-wetted” and “wetted” phases, and (b) difference in the number of lamellar layers between the two phases.
Andreas Engelbrecht and Hans Joachim Schöpe
Inoculation is widely used to tune the microstructure of a polycrystalline solid from the melt and thus its material properties.
First published on the web: 14 Sep 2012
Jinbo Wu, Weijia Wen and Ping Sheng
We give a short review on the generation and manipulation of “smart” electro-responsive droplets, based on the giant electrorehological fluid. In the image we show how such a smart droplet can stop the flow in the microfluidic channel with the application of an electric field. Such non-linear electro-fluidic response can enable a host of functionalities, among them the microfluidic logic gate.
First published on the web: 13 Sep 2012
Céline Billerit, Gavin D. M. Jeffries, Owe Orwar and Aldo Jesorka
A novel method to generate unilamellar vesicles from spin-coated lipid films by means of localized heating.
Ronald Gebhardt, José Toro-Sierra and Ulrich Kulozik
We study pressure dissociation of aggregated states of β-lactoglobulin at pH 4.6 using static and dynamic light scattering.
Jens Glaser, Jian Qin, Pavani Medapuram, Marcus Müller and David C. Morse
Simulations of quite different simulation models of diblock copolymers show equivalent results for the structure factor S(q) in corresponding states of systems with equal degrees of polymer overlap.
First published on the web: 12 Sep 2012
Priti S. Mohanty, Anand Yethiraj and Peter Schurtenberger
This work explores field-induced structure formation in a glass-forming ionic microgel system with ultra-soft interparticle interactions. Evidence is found for an amorphous to crystalline transition and an arrested phase separated state.
Susanne Braunmüller, Lothar Schmid, Erich Sackmann and Thomas Franke
We study the mechanical relaxation behavior of human red blood cells by observing the time evolution of shape change of cells flowing through microchannels with abrupt constrictions.
First published on the web: 11 Sep 2012
The effect of a phase transition on single molecule tracks of Annexin V in cushioned DMPC assemblies
Kumud R. Poudel, David J. Keller and James A. Brozik
Using single molecule tracking, this paper closely examines single transmembrane protein trajectories, activation energies, and nanoscopic domain formation in DMPC/PEG-PE/Brain-PS planar membranes as a function of temperature.
Gregory D. Bixler and Bharat Bhushan
Living nature is the inspiration for many innovations and continues to serve as an invaluable resource to solve technical challenges.
Randy A. Mrozek, Daniel B. Knorr, Scott W. Spangler, Phillip J. Cole and Joseph L. Lenhart
Precursor molecular weight strongly influences the modulus in solvent swollen gels due to enhanced formation of loop defects.
Soubhik Kumar Bhaumik, Suman Chakraborty and Sunando DasGupta
Use of progressively increasing electric field effectively counters the retraction of the contact line of an evaporating extended meniscus.
S. Pardo-Alonso, E. Solórzano, S. Estravís, M. A. Rodríguez-Perez and J. A. de Saja
Evidence on the enhanced nucleation effect of nanoclays leading to cell size reduction is found in rigid polyurethane nanocomposites by means of X-ray radioscopy.
Philippe Brunet
Tiny deposits of colloidal particles on micro-pillars ultra-hydrophobic surfaces and final ring deposit after drop evaporation.
Rongrong Zhou, Marc Leaver, Richard McCabe and Michael Holmes
We examine why the hydrophobic counter ion, tetramethylammonium stabilises random and correlated mesh phases over lamellar in perfluorocarbon water systems.
First published on the web: 10 Sep 2012
Mariko Nishi, Daisuke Nagao, Kentaro Hayasaka, Haruyuki Ishii and Mikio Konno
Magnetoresponsive, rod-like composite particles reversibly change their chain lengths by switching an external magnetic field under a fixed electric field.
Alireza Shams, Xuxia Yao, Jung Ok Park, Mohan Srinivasarao and Alejandro D. Rey
Defects in nematic liquid crystals under controlled confinement serve as a useful tool to characterize material properties as well as to reveal texture stability and pattern formation mechanisms in anisotropic soft matter.
Daniel Kim, Samanvaya Srivastava, Suresh Narayanan and Lynden A. Archer
Polymer nanocomposites containing nanoparticles smaller than the random coil size of their host polymer chains are shown to exhibit unique properties, such as lower viscosity and glass transition temperature relative to the neat polymer melt.
Daniel A. Bricarello, Maria J. Prada and Nitin Nitin
Soft Matter, 2012, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C2SM26474A, Paper
From collection Interaction of nano-objects with lipid membranes
DOI: 10.1039/C2SM26474A, Paper
From collection Interaction of nano-objects with lipid membranes
In order to maximize resistance to radical induced oxidation in lipid encapsulation systems (e.g., emulsions, liposomes, micelles and lipid coatings) the ideal strategy is to localize chemical protectants at the water–lipid interface.
Walter Richtering and Andrij Pich
Radial and lateral stresses occur inside core–shell microgels when external conditions are changed leading to unique internal structures and chain dynamics.
Jaroslav M. Ilnytskyi, Marina Saphiannikova, Dieter Neher and Michael P. Allen
Numerous effects related to liquid-crystal–mechanical coupling are obtained for an atom-based model liquid-crystal elastomer, by molecular dynamics computer simulations.
Anna Ochab-Marcinek, Stefan A. Wieczorek, Natalia Ziębacz and Robert Hołyst
The two-shell model of walking confined diffusion well approximates the diffusion of nanoparticles in solutions of flexible and polydisperse polymers.
Yutian Zhu, Xiaoping Yang, Weixin Kong, Yuping Sheng and Nan Yan
Segmented and double-helix multicompartment micelles from self-assembly of blends of ABC and AB block copolymers.
F. W. Bartels, K. Graf, A. B. Sugiharto, P. Deglmann and S. Koltzenburg
Ultrathin layers of water soluble polymers can be deposited onto a surface by the mechanical impact of an AFM tip. Each layer has a controllable height from 10 nm down to a few Ångströms. It is possible to stack multiple layers of equally charged polycarboxylate chains, as a contrast to the alternating deposition of anionic and cationic polymers by the well-known layer-by-layer (LBL) technique.
Christina Krause, Huajie Yin, Carole Cerclier, Denis Morineau, Andreas Wurm, Christoph Schick, Franziska Emmerling and Andreas Schönhals
The molecular dynamics of the discotic liquid crystal pyrene-1,3,6,8-tetracarboxylic tetra(2-ethylhexyl)ester is studied by dielectric relaxation and specific heat spectroscopy.
Yasar Akdogan, Yuzhou Wu, Klaus Eisele, Manuela Schaz, Tanja Weil and Dariush Hinderberger
Polycationic human serum albumin, cHSA, as well as cHSA conjugates with multiple polyethylene(oxide) chains of two different lengths were synthesized, and the uptake and release of spin-labeled fatty acid (FA) ligands were quantitatively analyzed by continuous wave (CW) electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy and nanoscale distance measurements with double electron–electron resonance (DEER) spectroscopy.
Qi Ge, Kai Yu, Yifu Ding and H. Jerry Qi
A simple theoretical solution was developed to predict the temperature dependent free recovery behaviors of amorphous shape memory polymers.
P. Viswanath, K. A. Suresh and Bharat Kumar
Hitherto unobserved spreading and retraction dynamics of a fluorescent dye doped smectic liquid crystal domain due to modification of the spreading coefficient at the air–water interface.
Wei-Tsung Chuang, Yen-Chih Huang, Chun-Jen Su, U.-Ser Jeng and Hwo-Shuenn Sheu
Stretching and specific annealing enables TOB-jacketed P4VP blocks of PS-b-P4VP to exhibit liquid crystal phases with increasing packing strength. The global structure of PS-b-P4VP(TOB)0.7 evolves from BCC to FCC, then to a highly oriented tetragonally perforated layer structure.
First published on the web: 07 Sep 2012
Laura R. Arriaga, Wiebke Drenckhan, Anniina Salonen, Jhonny A. Rodrigues, Ramón Íñiguez-Palomares, Emmanuelle Rio and Dominique Langevin
By combining hand shaking and microfluidic fabrication of foams with bulk and surface studies of aqueous dispersions containing mixtures of silica nano-particles and a short chain amphiphile, we elucidate some of the key mechanisms controlling foam stability.
Sébastien Marze and Maëla Choimet
Experimental digestion of a single oil droplet with monitoring of digestion products both at the oil–water interface and solubilized in the aqueous micellar phase.
Sébastien Marze, Maëla Choimet and Loïc Foucat
Development of DWS to monitor the digestion of turbid emulsions through structural transitions (vesicle to micelle).
Sowmiya Muthusubramanian, Amit Kumar Tiwari, Sonu and Subit Kumar Saha
A cationic surfactant-concentration dependent binding of a guest molecule showing TICT fluorescence with the nanotubes of β-CD and its release from the nanotubular cavities have been demonstrated.
