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Multiparticle collision dynamics (MPCD) is a flexible and robust mesoscale computational technique for simulating solvent-mediated hydrodynamic interactions in soft materials. Here, we provide a critical overview of the MPCD method and summarize its current strengths and limitations. The capabilities of the method are highlighted by reviewing its recent applications to simulate diverse phenomena, ranging from the flow of complex fluids and thermo-osmotic transport to bacterial swimming and active particle self-assembly. We also discuss outstanding challenges and emerging methodological developments that are expected to greatly expand the applicability of MPCD to other systems of technological importance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rigid spheres with a short-range attractive potential are taken as a coarse-grained model of vesicles, which contain a solution of semiflexible polymers in their interior. Assuming good solvent conditions with an implicit description of the solvent, effective monomers experience bond-length and bond-angle potentials as well as excluded-volume interaction. Due to the attractive vesicle surface, phase separation occurs between a thin shell of adsorbed monomers at the surface and a rather dilute, and therefore, disordered polymer solution in the sphere interior. While at a planar attractive surface the wormlike chains would exhibit liquid crystalline (nematic and smectic) order, the curvature of the sphere frustrates this order, causing the existence of defects in the orientational order. In the dense monolayer of surface-attached polymers, the stiff chains acquire a curvature corresponding to banana-like shapes for rather small contour length, causing a local nematic order of biaxial type. These orderings are compared to related phenomena in spheres densely filled with semiflexible polymers. We complement the results obtained by Molecuar Dynamics simulations by corresponding Density Functional Theory calculations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]