Van der Waals interactions have a fundamental role in biology, physics and chemistry, in particular in the self-assembly and the ensuing function of nanostructured materials. Here we utilize an efficient microscopic method to demonstrate that van der Waals interactions in nanomaterials act at distances greater than typically assumed, and can be characterized by different scaling laws depending ...

The non-polar component of the potential of mean force of dimerization of alanine dipeptide has been calculated in explicit solvent by free energy perturbation. We observe that the calculated PMF is inconsistent with a non-polar hydration free energy model based solely on the solute surface area. The non-linear behavior of the solute-solvent van der Waals energy is primarily responsible for the...

A number of experiments on fluid flow at the micro/nano-scale have demonstrated that flow velocity obviously deviates from the classical Poiseuille’s law due to the micro forces between the wall and the fluid. Based on an oil–water two-phase network simulation model, a three-dimensional pore-scale micro network model with solid–liquid interfacial effects was established. The influences of solid...

Van der Waals interactions between flat surfaces in uniaxial anisotropic media are investigated in the nonretarded limit. The main focus is the effect of nonzero tilt between the optical axis and the surface normal on the strength of the van der Waals attraction. General expressions for the van der Waals free energy are derived using the surface mode method and the transfer-matrix formalism. To...

The retarded Van der Waals force between a polarizable particle and a perfectly conducting plate is re-examined. The expression for this force given by Casimir and Polder represents a mean force, but there are large fluctuations around this mean value on short time scales which are of the same order of magnitude as the mean force itself. However, these fluctuations occur on time scales which ar...

The accurate description of van der Waals forces within density functional theory is currently one of the most active areas of research in computational physics and chemistry. Here we report results on the structural and energetic properties of graphite and hexagonal boron nitride, two layered materials where interlayer binding is dominated by van der Waals forces. Results from several density ...

Thermodynamic consistency test of isothermal vapor-liquid equilibrium (VLE) data of various binary systems containing Carbon dioxide (CO2)/Room temperature ionic liquids (RTILs) have been investigated in wide ranges of pressures in each isotherm precisely. In this paper Generic van der Waals (GvdW) equation of state (EoS) coupled with modified van der Waals Berthelot mixing rule has ...

The robotic manipulation of microscopic objects is disturbed directly by the adhesion between the endeffector and the objects. In the microscale, no reliable model of adhesion is available and currently the behaviour of the micro-objects cannot be predicted before experiments. This paper proposes a new model of adhesion based on the analytical resolution of the coupling between the mechanical d...