Complex Systems group

Universitat Rovira i Virgili,

Costa Daurada 

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Vladimir A. BAULIN

e-mail: vladimir.baulin@urv.cat

Open Positions 

Research areas

Controlled drug delivery (web page )

One of the purposes of the controlled drug delivery is a design of molecular structures allowing the release of active molecules in a predefined way. Such molecular structures called drug carriers or vectors, can transport active molecules to a specific site (drug targeting), hide transported molecules from the immune system (stealth technology) or deliver insoluble drugs through aqueous medias. The release profiles can be cyclic or smooth depending on applications. Most of the drug delivery vectors are traditional soft matter objects: colloids, vesicles, block copolymer micelles, gels, polyelectrolytes. We develop the Self Consistent Mean Field Theory (SCMFT) for studying the structure and properties of polymeric drug carriers. This theoretical method opens the possibility for designing the optimal structure of self-assembled aggregates for concrete application.

         Micellar drug carrier                                              Gel drug carrier (see more at web page)

Dynamic self-organization of cytoskeleton components (web page)

Microtubules, actin and intermediate filaments are dynamically self-assembled objects present in living cells. They provide the rigidity for the cytoskeleton, participate in many vital processes, like mitosis or cell adhesion. We study dynamic models for the self-organization of self-assembling rods due to mutual collisions.  Kinetic mechanism of collision induced ordering and pattering in solutions of self-assembling rods in parallel bundles or radial distributed asters is one of the examples of self-selection mechanisms.

Scaling approaches to soft-matter objects

Polymer chains in good solvents can be described using the analogy with magnetic n-component spin system. The repulsion of polymer chains from surfaces and between each other can be described by critical exponents known from this analogy. (web page)

Water soluble polymers

Neutral water soluble polymers are soluble due to specific interactions with water molecules including polarization of monomers and hydrogen bonding. Construction of an universal molecular model suitable for neutral water soluble polymers seems to be quite a difficult task: the formation of a hydrogen bonds changes seriously the local surrounding of a monomer. This makes difficult to quantify the both energy and entropy of polymer inserted into a water network.

Instead of developing a molecular model for water – polymer interactions, we rather proposed a phenomenological tool of effective interactions of monomers with water which is a function of concentration. Although this approach does not give insight to molecular mechanisms leading to solvatation, it is quite universal and can be used to link experimental data and the parameters used in computer simulations of components soluble in water. (web page)

Giant vesicles (web page)

Vesicles of several nanometers or even microns are self-assembled objects designed to mimic membranes of living cells. Giant vesicles of DOPC are easy to obtain and observe: the biggest vesicles can be viewed in optical microscope; their surface can be manipulated by mechanical force of micropipettes, external fields or nanometric latex beads.