Related papers: Toroidal membrane vesicles in spherical confinemen…
Nuclei of ordered materials emerging from the isotropic state usually show a shape topologically equivalent to a sphere; the well-known examples are crystals and nematic liquid crystal droplets. In this work, we explore experimentally and…
We use a series of molecular dynamics simulations, and analytical theory, to demonstrate that a system of hard spheres confined to a narrow cylindrical channel exhibits a continuous phase transition from an isotropic fluid at low densities,…
Monodisperse spherical colloidal particles confined within emulsion droplets can crystallize into icosahedral clusters. Experimentally it was observed that a few large colloidal particles added as defects preferentially migrate to the…
Cellular membranes exhibit a large variety of shapes, strongly coupled to their function. Many biological processes involve dynamic reshaping of membranes, usually mediated by proteins. This interaction works both ways: while proteins…
The biological membrane, which compartmentalizes the cell and its organelles, exhibit wide variety of macroscopic shapes of varying morphology and topology. A systematic understanding of the relation of membrane shapes to composition,…
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…
The dynamics of a spheroidal vesicle, bounded by an inextensible membrane, is analyzed in function of the enclosed fluid viscosity, and of the membrane mechanical properties. The two situations in which a bending rigidity and a shear…
The phase behavior of colloidal particles embedded in a binary fluid is influenced by wetting layers surrounding each particle. The free energy of the fluid film depends on its morphology, i.e., on size, shape and connectivity. Under rather…
The shape assumed by a slender elastic structure is a function both of the geometry of the space in which it exists and the forces it experiences. We explore by experiments and theoretical analysis, the morphological phase-space of a…
We conduct a systematic exploration of the energy landscape of vesicle morphologies within the framework of the Helfrich model. Vesicle shapes are determined by minimizing the elastic energy subject to constraints of constant area and…
Many vesicles have a spherical resting shape and exposure to fluid flows induces an exchange between sub-optical area and visible (systematic) deformation, while the total area is conserved. The dynamics which controls the exchange between…
This review reports some theoretical results on the Geometry of membranes. The governing equations to describe equilibrium configurations of lipid vesicles, lipid membranes with free edges, and chiral lipid membranes are derived from the…
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…
Liquid crystals can self-organize into a layered smectic phase. While the smectic layers are typically straight forming a lamellar pattern in bulk, external confinement may drastically distort the layers due to the boundary conditions…
We investigate experimentally and numerically the defect configurations emerging when a cholesteric liquid crystal is confined to a spherical shell. We uncover a rich scenario of defect configurations, some of them non-existent in nematic…
Theoretical studies of nearly spherical vesicles and microemulsion droplets, that present typical examples for thermally-excited systems that are subject to constraints, are reviewed. We consider the shape fluctuations of such systems…
This work is devoted to analyze the relation between the thermodynamic properties of a confined fluid and the shape of its confining vessel. Recently, new insights in this topic were found through the study of cluster integrals for…
We introduce and study the behavior of a tethered membrane of non-zero thickness embedded in three dimensions subject to an effective self-attraction induced by hydrophobicity arising from the tendency to minimize the area exposed to a…
Advances in nanotechnology lead to an increasing interest in how nanoparticles interact with biomembranes. Nanoparticles are wrapped spontaneously by biomembranes if the adhesive interactions between the particles and membranes compensate…
We introduce a novel model, comprising self-avoiding surfaces and incorporating edges and tubules, that is designed to characterize the structural morphologies and transitions observed within the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). By employing…