Related papers: Effective medium approach for stiff polymer networ…

The stretchability of polymeric materials is critical to many applications such as stretchable electronics and soft robotics, yet the stretchability of conventional cross-linked linear polymers is limited by the entanglements between…

Due to their unique structural and mechanical properties, randomly-crosslinked polymer networks play an important role in many different fields, ranging from cellular biology to industrial processes. In order to elucidate how these…

In active materials, uncoordinated internal stresses lead to emergent long-range flows. An understanding of how the behavior of active materials depends on mesoscopic (hydrodynamic) parameters is developing, but there remains a gap in…

We consider a biopolymer bundle consisting of filaments that are crosslinked together. The crosslinks are reversible: they can dynamically bind and unbind adjacent filament pairs as controlled by a binding enthalpy. The bundle is subjected…

Unlike most synthetic materials, biological materials often stiffen as they are deformed. This nonlinear elastic response, critical for the physiological function of some tissues, has been documented since at least the 19th century, but the…

This paper extends a field-theoretical dynamical networking formalism for mesoscopic polymer dynamics to explicitly include dedicated cross-linker particles. Cross-linkers are represented within a Martin-Siggia-Rose generating functional…

The selective solute partitioning within a polymeric network is of key importance to applications in which controlled release or uptake of solutes in a responsive hydrogel is required. In this work we investigate the impact of cross-links…

We study the elastic deformations in a cross-linked polymer network film triggered by the binding of submicron particles with a sticky surface, mimicking the interactions of viral pathogens with thin films of stimulus-responsive polymeric…

Molecular dynamic simulation enables one to correlate the evolution of the micro-structure with anisotropic stress when a material is subject to strain. The anisotropic stress due to a constant strain-rate load in a cross-linked polymer is…

The phase behavior of charged rods in the presence of inter-rod linkers is studied theoretically as a model for the equilibrium behavior underlying the organization of actin filaments by linker proteins in the cytoskeleton. The presence of…

Vitrimers are a special class of polymers that undergo dynamic cross-linking under thermal stimuli. Their ability to exchange covalent bonds can be harnessed to mitigate damage in a composite or to achieve recyclable aerospace composites.…

The forces that mixtures of motorized and passive crosslinking proteins collectively generate between cytoskeletal filaments within our cells are the key drivers of active cellular mechanics. Despite their importance, a unified theory to…

Essentially all biology is active and dynamic. Biological entities autonomously sense, com- pute, and respond using energy-coupled ratchets that can produce force and do work. The cytoskeleton, along with its associated proteins and motors,…

In this paper we study a system of entangled chains that bear reversible cross-links in a melt state. The cross-links are tethered uniformly on the backbone of each chain. A slip-link type model for the system is presented and solved for…

We aim to identify the control principles governing the adaptable formation of non-equilibrium structures in actomyosin networks. We build a phenomenological model and predict that biasing the energy dissipated by molecular motors should…

Contractility in animal cells is often generated by molecular motors such as myosin, which require polar substrates for their function. Motivated by recent experimental evidence of motor-independent contractility, we propose a robust…

We describe a model of cytoskeletal mechanics based on the force-induced conformational change of protein cross-links in a stressed polymer network. Slow deformation of simulated networks containing cross-links that undergo repeated, serial…

Many organisms have an elastic skeleton that consists of a closed shell of epithelial cells that is filled with fluid, and can actively regulate both elastic forces in the shell and hydrostatic pressure inside it. In this work we introduce…

Disordered elastic networks provide a framework for describing a wide variety of physical systems, ranging from amorphous solids, through polymeric fibrous materials to confluent cell tissues. In many cases, such networks feature two widely…

Signatures of glassy dynamics have been identified experimentally for a rich variety of materials in which molecular networks provide rigidity. Here we present a theoretical framework to study the glassy behavior of both passive and active…