Related papers: Pathways to faceting of vesicles
Herein, fundamentals of topology and symmetry breaking are used to understand crystallization and geometrical frustration in topologically close-packed structures. This frames solidification from a new perspective that is unique from…
We have employed molecular dynamics simulations based on the TIP4P/2005 water model to investigate the local structural, dynamical, and dielectric properties of the two recently reported body-centered-cubic and face-centered-cubic plastic…
Growing experimental evidence indicates that topological defects could serve as organizing centers in the morphogenesis of tissues. Here, we provide a quantitative explanation for this phenomenon, rooted in the buckling theory of deformable…
The ordering of rod-like particles in soft, deformable containers emerges from the interplay of anisotropic interactions, geometric confinement, and boundary compliance. This competition couples internal particle organization to container…
We show that the formation of membrane tubes (or membrane tethers), which is a crucial step in many biological processes, is highly non-trivial and involves first order shape transitions. The force exerted by an emerging tube is a…
Conical surfaces pose an interesting challenge to crystal growth: a crystal growing on a cone can wrap around and meet itself at different radii. We use a disk-packing algorithm to investigate how this closure constraint can geometrically…
Crystal growth processes produce a diverse array of surface formations, primarily distinguished by their geometric shapes. While some structures strictly adhere to the underlying crystal symmetry, others exhibit universal circular or oval…
Heterogeneities in the cell membrane due to coexisting lipid phases have been conjectured to play a major functional role in cell signaling and membrane trafficking. Thereby the material properties of multiphase systems, such as the line…
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…
The adhesion of a lipid membrane vesicle to a fixed substrate is examined from a geometrical point of view. This vesicle is described by the Helfrich hamiltonian quadratic in mean curvature; it interacts by contact with the substrate, with…
Morphologies of a vesicle confined in a spherical vesicle were explored experimentally by fast confocal laser microscopy and numerically by a dynamically-triangulated membrane model with area-difference elasticity. The confinement was found…
Eukaryote cells have a flexible shape, which dynamically changes according to the function performed by the cell. One mechanism for deforming the cell membrane into the desired shape is through the expression of curved membrane proteins.…
Inspired by epithelial morphogenesis, we consider a minimal model for the shaping of a surface driven by $p$-atic topological defects. We show that a positive (negative) defect can dynamically generate a (hyperbolic) cone whose shape…
We present a hydrodynamic model for a thin spherical shell of active nematic liquid crystal with an arbitrary configuration of defects. The active flows generated by defects in the director lead to the formation of stable vortices,…
Holding a shell in their hands, one can apply six loads: three by pulling and shearing, and three by bending and twisting. Here, it is shown that the shell resists exactly three load cases and comply with the other three, provided the shell…
We show that, at low inertia and large elasticity, shell models of viscoelastic fluids develop a chaotic behaviour with properties similar to those of elastic turbulence. The low dimensionality of shell models allows us to explore a wide…
We introduce a model system of anisotropic colloidal `rocks'. Due to their shape, the bonding introduced via non-absorbing polymers is profoundly different from spherical particles: bonds between rocks are rigid against rotation, leading to…
Viscoelastic flows transition from steady to time-dependent, chaotic dynamics under critical flow conditions, but the implications of geometric disorder for flow stability in these systems are unknown. Utilizing microfluidics, we flow a…
A remarkable property of flexible self-avoiding elastic surfaces (membranes) is that they remain flat at all temperatures, even in the absence of a bending rigidity or in the presence of active fluctuations. Here, we report numerical…
We present molecular simulation data for viscosity, self-diffusivity, and the local structural ordering of (i) a hard-sphere fluid and (ii) a square-well fluid with short-range attractions. The latter fluid exhibits a region of dynamic…