Exotic fluids and crystals of soft polymeric colloids

Likos, Christos N.; Hoffmann, Norman; Löwen, Hartmut; Louis, Ard A.

doi:10.1088/0953-8984/14/33/309

Cited by 81 publications

(100 citation statements)

References 66 publications

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“…It has been shown that these systems may exhibit many different crystal structures, including rather exotic ones. [44][45][46][47] Therefore, the problem of finding the most stable structure for a certain thermodynamic state arises. Here, we have adopted a naive approach, consisting in performing many ( 30) runs for each state, corresponding to different minimization paths.…”

Section: B Minimization Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

An unconstrained DFT approach to microphase formation and application to binary Gaussian mixtures

Pini

Parola

Reatto³

2015

The Journal of Chemical Physics

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Phase behavior and structure of star-polymer-colloid mixtures J. Chem. Phys. 116, 9518 (2002) The formation of microphases in systems of particles interacting by repulsive, bounded potentials is studied by means of density-functional theory (DFT) using a simple, mean-field-like form for the free energy which has already been proven accurate for this class of soft interactions. In an effort not to constrain the configurations available to the system, we do not make any assumption on the functional form of the density profile ρ(r), save for its being periodic. We sample ρ(r) at a large number of points in the unit cell and minimize the free energy with respect to both the values assumed by ρ(r) at these points and the lattice vectors which identify the Bravais lattice. After checking the accuracy of the method by applying it to a one-component generalized exponential model (GEM) fluid with pair potential ϵ exp[−(r/R) 4 ], for which extensive DFT and simulation results are already available, we turn to a binary mixture of Gaussian particles which some time ago was shown to support microphase formation [A. J. Archer, C. N. Likos, and R. Evans, J. Phys.: Condens. Matter 16, L297 (2004)], but has not yet been investigated in detail. The phase diagram which we obtain, that supersedes the tentative one proposed by us in a former study [M. Carta, D. Pini, A. Parola, and L. Reatto, J. Phys.: Condens. Matter 24, 284106 (2012)], displays cluster, tubular, and bicontinuous phases similar to those observed in block copolymers or oil/water/surfactant mixtures. Remarkably, bicontinuous phases occupy a rather large portion of the phase diagram. We also find two non-cubic phases, in both of which one species is preferentially located inside the channels left available by the other, forming helices of alternating chirality. The features of cluster formation in this mixture and in GEM potentials are also compared. C 2015 AIP Publishing LLC. [http://dx

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Section: B Minimization Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

An unconstrained DFT approach to microphase formation and application to binary Gaussian mixtures

Pini

Parola

Reatto³

2015

The Journal of Chemical Physics

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“…Two-length-scale potentials like we study are widely used 31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40,40 ; they qualitatively describe effective interactions in molecular systems, 41,42 soft matter systems 43,44,45,46,47 and metallic alloys 14,48,49,50,51 where QC formation has been experimentally observed but not completely accounted for.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Self-assembly of the decagonal quasicrystalline order in simple three-dimensional systems

2015

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Using molecular dynamics simulations we show that a one-component system can be driven to a three-dimensional decagonal (10-fold) quasicrystalline state just by purely repulsive, isotropic and monotonic interaction pair potential with two characteristic length scales; no attraction is needed. We found that self-assembly of a decagonal quasicrystal from a fluid can be predicted by two dimensionless effective parameters describing the fluid structure. We demonstrate stability of the results under changes of the potential by obtaining the decagonal order for three particle systems with different interaction potentials, both purely repulsive and attractive, but with the same values of the effective parameters. Our results suggest that soft matter quasicrystals with decagonal symmetry can be experimentally observed for the same systems demonstrating the dodecagonal order for an appropriate tuning of the effective parameters.

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“…Computer simulations have shown that spherical particles interacting isotropically through repulsive interparticle interactions on two different length scales ͑e.g., a square shoulder potential͒ can spontaneously assemble into anisotropic structures. [15][16][17] The presence of an isotropic short ranged interparticle attraction coupled to a longer ranged repulsion can also yield anisotropic structures. For instance, the assembly of spherical nanoparticles decorated with short alkanes into stripes on a substrate 18,19 or into nonequilibrium gels in three dimensions 20,21 can be rationalized on this basis.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modeling the anisotropic self-assembly of spherical polymer-grafted nanoparticles

Pryamtisyn

Ganesan

Panagiotopoulos

et al. 2009

The Journal of Chemical Physics

117

120

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Effect of bidispersity in grafted chain length on grafted chain conformations and potential of mean force between polymer grafted nanoparticles in a homopolymer matrix The Journal of Chemical Physics 134, 194906 (2011); 10.1063/1.3590275 Modeling the anisotropic self-assembly of spherical polymer-grafted nanoparticles Recent experimental results demonstrated that polymer grafted nanoparticles in solvents display self-assembly behavior similar to the microphase separation of block copolymers and other amphiphiles. We present a mean-field theory and complementary computer simulations to shed light on the parametric underpinnings of the experimental observations. Our theory suggests that such self-assembled structures occur most readily when the nanoparticle size is comparable to the radius of gyration of the polymer brush chains. Much smaller particle sizes are predicted to yield uniform particle dispersions, while larger particles are expected to agglomerate due to phase separation from the solvent. Selected aspects of our theoretical predictions are corroborated by computer simulations.

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Exotic fluids and crystals of soft polymeric colloids

Cited by 81 publications

References 66 publications

An unconstrained DFT approach to microphase formation and application to binary Gaussian mixtures

An unconstrained DFT approach to microphase formation and application to binary Gaussian mixtures

Self-assembly of the decagonal quasicrystalline order in simple three-dimensional systems

Modeling the anisotropic self-assembly of spherical polymer-grafted nanoparticles

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