How chains and rings affect the dynamic magnetic susceptibility of a highly clustered ferrofluid.

The dynamic magnetic susceptibility, χ(ω), of a model ferrofluid at a very low concentration (volume fraction, approximately 0.05%), and with a range of dipolar coupling constants (1≤λ≤8), is examined using Brownian dynamics simulations. With increasing λ, the structural motifs in the system change from unclustered particles, through chains, to rings. This gives rise to a nonmonotonic dependence of the static susceptibility χ(0) on λ and qualitative changes to the frequency spectrum. The behavior of χ(0) is already understood, and the simulation results are compared to an existing theory. The single-particle rotational dynamics are characterized by the Brownian time, τ_{B}, which depends on the particle size, carrier-liquid viscosity, and temperature. With λ≤5.5, the imaginary part of the spectrum, χ^{''}(ω), shows a single peak near ω∼τ_{B}^{-1}, characteristic of single particles. With λ≥5.75, the spectrum is dominated by the low-frequency response of chains. With λ≥7, new features appear at high frequency, which correspond to intracluster motions of dipoles within chains and rings. The peak frequency corresponding to these intracluster motions can be computed accurately using a simple theory.

Disordered Filaments Mediate the Fibrillogenesis of Type I Collagen in Solution.

Collagen type I is one of the major structural proteins in mammals, providing tissues such as cornea, tendon, bone, skin, and dentin with mechanical stability, strength, and toughness. Collagen fibrils are composed of collagen molecules arranged in a quarter-stagger array that gives rise to a periodicity of 67 nm along the fibril axis, with a 30 nm overlap zone and a 37 nm gap zone. The formation of such highly organized fibrils is a self-assembly process where electrostatic and hydrophobic interactions play a critical role in determining the staggering of the molecules with 67 nm periodicity. While collagen self-assembly has been extensively studied, not much is known about the mechanism, and in particular, the nature of the nuclei that initially form, the different stages of the aggregation process, and how the organization of the molecules into fibrils arises. By combining time-resolved cryo-transmission electron microscopy with molecular dynamics simulations, we show that collagen assembly is a multistep process in which the molecules first form filaments which self-organize into fibrils with a disordered structure. The appearance of the D-band periodicity is gradual and starts with the alignment of adjacent filaments at the N-terminal end of the molecules, first leading to bands with a periodicity of 67 nm and then to the formation of gap and overlap regions.

Effects of nanoparticle heating on the structure of a concentrated aqueous salt solution.

The effects of a rapidly heated nanoparticle on the structure of a concentrated aqueous salt solution are studied using molecular dynamics simulations. A diamond-like nanoparticle of radius 20 Å is immersed in a sodium-chloride solution at 20% above the experimental saturation concentration and equilibrated at T = 293 K and P = 1 atm. The nanoparticle is then rapidly heated to several thousand degrees Kelvin, and the system is held under isobaric-isoenthalpic conditions. It is observed that after 2-3 ns, the salt ions are depleted far more than water molecules from a proximal zone 15-25 Å from the nanoparticle surface. This leads to a transient reduction in molality in the proximal zone and an increase in ion clustering in the distal zone. At longer times, ions begin to diffuse back into the proximal zone. It is speculated that the formation of proximal and distal zones, and the increase in ion clustering, plays a role in the mechanism of nonphotochemical laser-induced nucleation.

Influence of dipolar interactions on the magnetic susceptibility spectra of ferrofluids.

The frequency-dependent magnetic susceptibility of a ferrofluid is calculated under the assumption that the constituent particles undergo Brownian relaxation only. Brownian-dynamics simulations are carried out in order to test the predictions of a recent theory [A. O. Ivanov, V. S. Zverev, and S. S. Kantorovich, Soft Matter 12, 3507 (2016)1744-683X10.1039/C5SM02679B] that includes the effects of interparticle dipole-dipole interactions. The theory is based on the so-called modified mean-field approach and possesses the following important characteristics: in the low-concentration, noninteracting regime, it gives the correct single-particle Debye-theory results; it yields the exact leading-order results in the zero-frequency limit; it includes particle polydispersity correctly from the outset; and it is based on firm theoretical foundations allowing, in principle, systematic extensions to treat stronger interactions and/or higher concentrations. The theory and simulations are compared in the case of a model monodisperse ferrofluid, where the effects of interactions are predicted to be more pronounced than in a polydisperse ferrofluid. The susceptibility spectra are analyzed in detail in terms of the low-frequency behavior, the position of the peak in the imaginary (out-of-phase) part, and the characteristic decay time of the magnetization autocorrelation function. It is demonstrated that the theory correctly predicts the trends in all of these properties with increasing concentration and dipolar coupling constant, the product of which is proportional to the Langevin susceptibility χ_{L}. The theory is in quantitative agreement with the simulation results as long as χ_{L}≲1.

Simulations of dipolar fluids using effective many-body isotropic interactions.

The partition function of a system with pairwise-additive anisotropic dipole-dipole interactions is equal to that of a hypothetical system with many-body isotropic interactions [G. Stell, Phys. Rev. Lett. 32, 286 (1974)]. The effective many-body interactions contain n-body contributions of all orders. Each contribution is known as an expansion in terms of the particle-particle distances r, and the coefficients are temperature dependent. The leading-order two-body term is the familiar -r(-6) attraction, and the leading-order three-body term is equivalent to the Axilrod-Teller interaction. In this work, a fluid of particles with the leading-order two-body and three-body interactions is compared to an equivalent dipolar soft-sphere fluid. Molecular simulations are used to determine the conditions under which the effective many-body interactions reproduce the fluid-phase structures of the dipolar system. The effective many-body interaction works well at moderately high temperatures but fails at low temperatures where particle chaining is expected to occur. It is shown that an adjustment of the coefficients of the two-body and three-body terms leads to a good description of the structure of the dipolar fluid even in the chaining regime, due primarily to the ground-state linear configuration of the three-body Axilrod-Teller interaction. The vapor-liquid phase diagrams of systems with different Axilrod-Teller contributions are determined. As the strength of the three-body interaction is increased, the critical temperature and density both decrease and disappear completely above a threshold strength, where chaining eventually suppresses the condensation transition.

Structure and dynamics of potassium chloride in aqueous solution.

The structure and dynamics of potassium chloride in aqueous solution over a wide range of concentrations-and in particular beyond saturation-are studied using molecular dynamics simulations to help shed light on recent experimental studies of nonphotochemical laser-induced nucleation (NPLIN). In NPLIN experiments, the duration, t, of the laser pulse (with wavelength 1064 nm) is found to influence the occurrence of crystal nucleation in supersaturated KCl(aq): if t is less than about 5 ps, no crystal nucleation is observed; if t is greater than about 100 ps, crystal nucleation is observed, and with a known dependence on laser power. Assuming that the laser acts on spontaneously formed solute clusters, these observations suggest that there are transient structures in supersaturated solutions with relaxation times on the scale of 5-100 ps. Ion-cluster formation and ion-cluster lifetimes are calculated according to various criteria, and it is found that, in the supersaturated regime, there are indeed structures with relaxation times of up to 100 ps. In addition, the ion dynamics in this regime is found to show signs of collective behavior, as evidenced by stretched exponential decay of the self-intermediate scattering function. Although these results do not explain the phenomenon of NPLIN, they do provide insights into possible relevant dynamical factors in supersaturated aqueous solutions of potassium chloride.