Related papers: Electrostatics-driven shape transitions in soft sh…

We study elasticity-driven morphological transitions of soft spherical core shell structures in which the core can be treated as an isotropic elastic continuum and the surface or shell as a tensionless liquid layer, whose elastic response…

We investigate how thin structures change their shape in response to non-mechanical stimuli that can be interpreted as variations in the structure's natural curvature. Starting from the theory of non-Euclidean plates and shells, we derive…

We investigate electrostatic stability of charged droplets, modeled as permeable, charged spheres, and their encapsidation in thin, arbitrarily charged nano-shells, immersed in a neutralizing asymmetric electrolyte background. The latter…

On microscopic scales, the crystallinity of flexible tethered or cross linked membranes determines their mechanical response. We show that by controlling the type, number and distribution of defects on a spherical elastic shell, it is…

This theoretical and numerical study investigates the impact of electrostatic stresses on the shape of charged water structures (grains) in weakly ionized plasmas. We developed an analytic model to predict the conditions under which a grain…

Amorphous silica deforms viscoplastically at elevated temperatures, as is common for brittle glasses. The key mechanism of viscoplastic deformation involves interatomic bond switching, which is known to be a thermally activated process. In…

Living organisms have mastered the dynamic control of internal stresses to perform an array of functions, such as change shape and locomote. State-of-the-art attempts to replicate this ability in synthetic materials are rudimentary in…

In this paper, we present a 2D numerical model developed to simulate the dynamics of soft, deformable particles. To accommodate significant particle deformations, the particle surface is represented as a narrow shell composed of mass points…

Polarizable particle systems, including charged colloids, polarizable ions, biomolecular assemblies, and soft nanomaterials, can exhibit contact electrostatic interactions that depart strongly from Coulomb behavior when dielectric mismatch…

Nematic elastomers are programmable soft materials that display large, reversible and predictable deformation under an external stimulus such as a change in temperature or light. While much of the work in the field has focused on actuation…

The recent discovery of electro-active polymers has shown great promises in the field of soft robotics, and was logically followed by experimental, numerical and theoretical developments. Most of these studies were concerned with systems…

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.…

Modeling membrane interactions with arbitrarily shaped colloidal particles, such as environmental micro- and nanoplastics, at the cell scale remains particularly challenging, owing to the complexity of particle geometries and the need to…

Exceptionally large strains can be produced in soft elastomers by the application of an electric field and the strains can be exploited for a variety of novel actuators, such as tunable lenses and tactile actuators. However, shape morphing…

The shape of biological shells, such as cell nuclei, membranes, and vesicles, often deviates from a perfect sphere due to an interplay of complex interactions with a myriad of molecular structures. In particular, semiflexible biopolymers…

The application of nanocrystals as heterogeneous catalysts and plasmonic nanoparticles requires fine control of their shape and chemical composition. A promising idea to achieve synergistic effects is to combine two distinct chemical and/or…

Cellular uptake of nanoplastics is instrumental in their environmental accumulation and transfer to humans through the food chain. Despite extensive studies using spherical plastic nanoparticles, the influence of the morphological…

Designing reconfigurable materials based on deformable nanoparticles (NPs) hinges on an understanding of the energetically-favored shapes these NPs can adopt. Using simulations, we show that hollow, deformable patchy NPs tailored with…

Morphogenesis involves the transformation of initially simple shapes, such as multicellular spheroids, into more complex $3D$ shapes. These shape changes are governed by mechanical forces including molecular motor-generated forces as well…

We present an implementation in a linear-scaling density-functional theory code of an electronic enthalpy method, which has been found to be natural and efficient for the ab initio calculation of finite systems under hydrostatic pressure.…