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We study the effect of atomic scale surface-lubricant interactions on nanoscale boundary-lubricated friction, by considering two example surfaces - hydrophilic mica and hydrophobic graphene - confining thin layers of water in molecular…
Light propagation through artificially patterned anisotropic materials, such as dielectric metasurfaces, enables precise control of the spatio-vectorial properties of optical fields using highly transparent, thin, and flat optical elements.…
Particles with directional interactions are promising building blocks for new functional materials and may serve as models for biological structures. Mutually attractive nanoparticles that are deformable due to flexible surface groups, for…
Water drops used as reaction compartments are commonly immobilized on hydrophilic areas bordered by hydrophobic areas. For many applications, such as the trapping of non-adherent cells, it is desirable to exploit the inertness and the…
The adsorption of lysozyme, cytochrome c and myoglobin, similar-sized globular proteins of approximately 1.5 nm radius, into the mesoporous silica material Santa Barbara Amorphous-15 (SBA-15) with 3.3 nm mean pore radius has been studied…
Blisters, delaminated regions that form in multilayered structures under compressive stresses, are observed across a wide range of length scales, from two-dimensional materials to protective coatings and laminated composites. Far from being…
Biological materials achieve directional reinforcement with oriented assemblies of anisotropic building blocks. One such example is the nanocomposite structure of keratinized epithelium on the toe pad of tree frogs, in which hexagonal…
The formulation of a new prism finite element is presented for the nonlinear analysis of solid shells subject to large strains and large displacements. The element is based on hierarchical, heterogeneous, and anisotropic shape functions. As…
Eukaryotic cells are large enough to detect signals and then orient to them by differentiating the signal strength across the length and breadth of the cell. Amoebae, fibroblasts, neutrophils and growth cones all behave in this way. Little…
Photonic materials with angular independent structural colour are highly desirable because they offer the broad viewing angles required for application as colorants in paints, cosmetics, textiles or displays. However, they are challenging…
Recent experimental work has shown that eukaryotic cells can swim in a fluid as well as crawl on a substrate. We investigate the swimming behavior of Dictyostelium discoideum amoebae who swim by initiating traveling protrusions at the front…
We use numerical simulations to show how noninteracting hard particles binding to a deformable elastic shell may self-assemble into a variety of linear patterns. This is a result of the nontrivial elastic response to deformations of shells.…
Functional nanoparticles (NPs) have gained significant attention as a promising application in various fields, including sensor, smart coating, drug delivery, and more. Here, we propose a novel mechanism assisted by machine-learning…
The design of novel functional materials in silico is severely hampered by the lack of robust and computationally efficient methods for describing both molecular absorbance and screening on substrates. Here we employ our hybrid…
We demonstrate scaffolding of plasmonic nanoparticles by topological defects induced by colloidal microspheres to match their surface boundary conditions with a uniform far-field alignment in a liquid crystal host. Displacing energetically…
We report on self-assembly, clustering, and conformational phases of peptides on inorganic semiconductor surfaces. The peptide-covered surface fraction can differ by a factor of 25, depending mainly on surface and peptide polarity. Low…
We have studied structure formation in a confined block copolymer melt by means of dynamic density functional theory (DDFT). The confinement is two-dimensional, and the confined geometry is that of a cylindrical nanopore. Although the…
In the realm of functional materials, the production of two-dimensional structures with tuneable porosity is of paramount relevance for many practical applications: surfaces with regular arrays of pores can be used for selective adsorption…
Here we introduce a versatile stereolithographic route to produce three different kinds of Si-containing thermosets that yield high performance ceramics upon thermal treatment. Our approach is based on a fast and inexpensive thiol-ene free…
Molecular self-assembly is a well-known technique to create highly functional nanostructures on surfaces. Self-assembly on two-dimensional materials is a developing field and has already resulted in the discovery of several rich and…