Related papers: Buckling of paramagnetic chains in soft gels
Thin elastic sheets supported on compliant media form wrinkles under lateral compression. Since the lateral pressure is coupled to the sheet's deformation, varying it periodically in time creates a parametric excitation. We study the…
We study the properties of polyelectrolyte chains under different solvent conditions, using a variational technique. The free energy and the conformational properties of a polyelectrolyte chain are studied minimizing the free energy $F_N$,…
We uncover how nonlinearities dramatically alter the buckling of elastic beams. First, we show experimentally that sufficiently wide ordinary elastic beams and specifically designed metabeams ---beams made from a mechanical metamaterial---…
We visualize entanglements in polymer melts using molecular dynamics simulation. A bead at an entanglement interacts persistently for long times with the non-bonded beads (those excluding the adjacent ones in the same chain). The…
Ferrogels and magnetic elastomers differentiate themselves from other materials by their unique capability of reversibly changing shape and mechanical properties under the influence of an external magnetic field. A crucial issue in the…
Entangled networks of stiff biopolymers exhibit complex dynamic response, emerging from the topological constraints that neighboring filaments impose upon each other. We propose a class of reference models for entanglement dynamics of stiff…
The signature topological feature of Maxwell lattices is their polarization, which manifests as an unbalance in stiffness between opposite edges of a finite domain. The manifestation of this asymmetry is especially dramatic in the case of…
Molecular dynamics simulations have been employed to study the formation of a physical (thermoreversible) gel by amphiphilic A-B-A triblock copolymers in aqueous solution. In order to mimic the structure of hydrogel-forming polypeptides…
Conjugated polymers are soft, one-dimensional conductors that admit complex interactions between their polymeric, conformational degrees of freedom and their electronic ones. The presence of extended electronic states along their backbone…
The buckling instabilities of core-shell systems, comprising an interior elastic sphere, attached to an exterior shell, have been proposed to underlie myriad biological morphologies. To fully discuss such systems, however, it is important…
Magnetic composite materials i.e. elastomers, polymer gels, or polymer solutions with embedded magnetic nanoparticles are useful for many technical and bio-medical applications. However, the microscopic details of the coupling mechanisms…
Deformable colloids and macromolecules adsorb at interfaces, as they decrease the interfacial energy between the two media. The deformability, or softness, of these particles plays a pivotal role in the properties of the interface. In this…
Large deformations of soft elastic beads spinning at high angular velocity in a denser background fluid are investigated theoretically, numerically, and experimentally using millimeter-size polyacrylamide hydrogel particles introduced in a…
Polyelectrolyte gels are a very attractive class of actuation materials with remarkable electronic and mechanical properties with a great similarity to biological contractile tissues. They consist of a polymer network with ionizable groups…
We use optical trapping to continuously bend an isolated microtubule while simultaneously measuring the applied force and the resulting filament strain, thus allowing us to determine its elastic properties over a wide range of applied…
We report structure formation in submonolayers of magnetic microparticles subjected to periodic electrostatic and magnetic excitations. Depending on the excitation parameters, we observe the formation of a rich variety of structures:…
We introduce a new dynamic light scattering method, termed photon correlation imaging, which enables us to resolve the dynamics of soft matter in space and time. We demonstrate photon correlation imaging by investigating the slow dynamics…
Under an externally applied load, granular packings form force chains that depend on the contact network and moduli of the grains. In this work, we investigate packings of variable modulus (VM) particles, where we can direct force chains by…
Soft matters whose constituents are deformable are ubiquitous in nature especially in biological systems-including cells and their organelles-as well as in foams and emulsions. The capacity for deformation in these soft materials gives rise…
Particle surface chemistry and internal softness are two fundamental parameters in governing the mechanical properties of dense colloidal suspensions, dictating structure and flow, therefore of interest from materials fabrication to…