Related papers: Entropic forces stabilize diverse emergent structu…

We report, for the first time, some experimental observations regarding a new type of long range interaction between rigid particles that prevails when they are suspended in an soft elastic gel. A denser particle submerges itself to a…

Polymers with active segments constitute prospective future materials and are used as a model for some biological systems such as chromatin. The directions of the active forces are typically introduced with temporal or spatial correlations…

Collections of simple, self-propelled colloidal particles exhibit complex, emergent dynamical behavior, with promising applications in microrobotics. When confined within a deformable vesicle, self-propelled rods cluster and align,…

We show that transport in the presence of entropic barriers exhibits peculiar characteristics which makes it distinctly different from that occurring through energy barriers. The constrained dynamics yields a scaling regime for the particle…

Charged colloidal particles trapped at an air--water interface are well known to form an ordered crystal, stabilized by a long ranged repulsion, the details of this repulsion remain something of a mystery, but all experiments performed to…

Microswimmers and active colloids often move in confined systems, including those involving interfaces. Such interfaces, especially at the microscale, may deform in response to the stresses of the flow created by the active particle. We…

Entangled states are ubiquitous amongst fibrous materials, whether naturally occurring (keratin, collagen, DNA) or synthetic (nanotube assemblies, elastane). A key mechanical characteristic of these systems is their ability to reorganise in…

Ensembles of particles rotating in a two-dimensional fluid can exhibit chaotic dynamics yet develop signatures of hidden order. Such "rotors" are found in the natural world spanning vastly disparate length scales - from the rotor proteins…

Limited-valency colloidal particles can self-assemble into polymeric structures analogous to molecules. While their structural equilibrium properties have attracted wide attention, insight into their dynamics has proven challenging. Here,…

Depletion interactions arise from entropic forces, and their ability to induce aggregation and even ordering of colloidal particles through self-assembly is well established, especially for spherical colloids. We vary the size and…

During the life of animals, epithelial tissues undergo extensive deformations--first to form organs during embryogensis and later to preserve integrity and function in adulthood. To what extent these deformations resemble that of non-living…

Grafting linkers with open ends of complementary single-stranded DNA makes a flexible tool to tune interactions between colloids,which facilitates the design of complex self-assembly structures. Recently, it has been proposed to coat…

We consider a one-dimensional elastic membrane, which is pushed by growing filaments. The filaments tend to grow by creating local protrusions in the membrane and this process has surface energy and bending energy costs. Although it is…

Changes in the geometry and topology of self-assembled membranes underlie diverse processes across cellular biology and engineering. Similar to lipid bilayers, monolayer colloidal membranes have in-plane fluid-like dynamics and out-of-plane…

Complex colloidal cluster morphologies are desirable for the fabrication of advanced materials, such as photonic crystals and meta-materials, and can be formed through evaporation-driven packing. By coupling lattice Boltzmann and discrete…

Living systems are chiral on multiple scales, from constituent biopolymers to large scale morphology, and their active mechanics is both driven by chiral components and serves to generate chiral morphologies. We describe the mechanics of…

Chirality is a recurrent theme in the study of biological systems, in which active processes are driven by the internal conversion of chemical energy into work. Bacterial flagella, acto-myosin filaments and microtubule bundles are active…

Entropy-driven equilibrium phase behaviour of hard particle dispersions can be understood from excluded volume arguments only. While monodisperse hard spheres only exhibit a fluid-solid phase transition, anisotropic hard particles such as…

We investigate the interplay between chirality and confinement in harmonically trapped active particles. The circular character of chiral motion combines with the radial symmetry of the potential to create distinctive non-equilibrium…

Designing protocols to dynamically direct the self-assembly of colloidal particles has become an important direction in soft matter physics because of the promising applications in fabrication of dynamic responsive functional materials.…