Three recent publications involving TU/e researchers offer new insights into the world of soft and living materials. The studies explore separation in polymers liquids, advanced polymer-based materials for light technology, and the interaction between living cells and the soft materials that surround them. While the topics vary, they share one common goal: to better understand how materials behave and how that knowledge can be applied to new applications in healthcare and advanced technologies.
Shedding new light on how polymer liquids separate
The formation of structures in our cells that help our cells to function depends on how liquids containing polymer-like materials separate into different liquids. Better known as liquid-liquid phase separation, or LLPS for short, this also affects the type of structures that emerge in artificial cells or in bio-inspired materials.
Interactions between polymers in the liquid and interactions between polymers and the solvent lead to two types of separations. First, in segregative liquid-liquid phase separation, repulsion between unlike polymers leads to the formation of two or more distinct phases (image on the right).
On the contrary, in associative liquid-liquid phase separation, when attraction between two different polymers is strong enough, a dense mixture of both polymers appears and is separate from a part where the solvent reigns supreme (image on the left). Until now, segregative separation has been well understood, but the same cannot be said for associative separation.
Using theory for how polymer solutions mix and unmix, Remco Tuinier and Álvaro González García from the Department of Chemical Engineering and Chemistry have shed new light on how polymer-based liquids separate. Their work could help others to better understand how proteins aggregate in cells - a signature of several neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, as well as guide the design of artificial materials.
