Figure 1.

A sketch of the procedure employed in this work to synthesize in silico microgels. The monomer and cross-link molecules (leftmost panel) are initially modeled as patchy particles with two and four patches, respectively. This is shown in the central panel, where bivalent patchy particles (mimicking NIPAM monomers) are colored in blue, tetravalent ones, acting as BIS cross-linkers, are red, and patches are represented in gray. After the network has assembled, the resulting configuration is used as a starting point for simulations performed with a bead–spring model (rightmost panel).