2018/02/22 by Sunil P. Singh, Gerhard Gompper, Roland G. Winkler · 21 citations
Chemical Engineering · Engineering · Materials Science · Medicine · Physics and Astronomy · #Blood properties and coagulation #Chemical engineering #Colloid #Computer science #Engineering #Environmental science #Geology #Geomorphology #Material Dynamics and Properties #Materials science #Rheology and Fluid Dynamics Studies #Sediment #Sedimentation #State (computer science) #cond-mat.soft
paper · pdf · doi:10.1063/1.5001886
published in The Journal of Chemical Physics 148(8), 084901 (American Institute of Physics)
openalex publication_date 2018/02/22 · arxiv created 2018/03/08 · arxiv updated 2018/03/09 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
The structural and dynamical properties of ultra-soft colloids-star polymers-exposed to a uniform external force field are analyzed by applying the multiparticle collision dynamics technique, a hybrid coarse-grain mesoscale simulation approach, which captures thermal fluctuations and long-range hydrodynamic interactions. In the weak-field limit, the structure of the star polymer is nearly unchanged; however, in an intermediate regime, the radius of gyration decreases, in particular transverse to the sedimentation direction. In the limit of a strong field, the radius of gyration increases with field strength. Correspondingly, the sedimentation coefficient increases with increasing field strength, passes through a maximum, and decreases again at high field strengths. The maximum value depends on the functionality of the star polymer. High field strengths lead to symmetry breaking with trailing, strongly stretched polymer arms and a compact star-polymer body. In the weak-field-linear response regime, the sedimentation coefficient follows the scaling relation of a star polymer in terms of functionality and arm length.