Related papers: Probing a self-assembled fd virus membrane with a …
The self-assembly of hard polyhedral particles confined to a flat interface is studied using Monte Carlo simulations. The particles are pinned to the interface by restricting their movement in the direction perpendicular to it while…
We investigate effective interactions between a colloidal particle, immersed in a binary mixture of smaller spheres, and a semipermeable membrane. The colloid is modeled as a big hard sphere and the membrane is represented as an infinitely…
Isoporous membranes made from diblock copolymers have numerous applications, including water treatment and protein separation, and are successfully produced at a laboratory scale under controlled conditions. However, achieving optimal…
A coarse-grained computational model is used to investigate the effect of a fluid membrane on patchy-particle assembly into biologically-relevant structures motivated by viral cores and clathrin. For cores, we demonstrate a non-monotonic…
Hollow microgels are elastic polymer shells easily realizable in experiments. Recent works have shown the emergence of buckling events in dilute hollow microgels under the effect of an added osmotic pressure. Here, we perform large-scale…
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…
Understanding interactions between microparticles and lipid membranes is of increasing importance, especially for unraveling the influence of microplastics on our health and environment. Here, we study how a short-ranged adhesive force…
Particles with directional interactions are promising building blocks for new functional materials and may serve as models for biological structures. Mutually attractive nanoparticles that are deformable due to flexible surface groups, for…
A binary mixture of particles interacting with spherically-symmetric potentials leading to microsegregation is studied by theory and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. We consider spherical particles with equal diameters and volume…
Worm-like filaments that are propelled homogeneously along their tangent vector are studied by Brownian dynamics simulations. Systems in two dimensions are investigated, corresponding to filaments adsorbed to interfaces or surfaces. A large…
The colloidal processing of nearly monodisperse and highly crystalline single-domain ferroelectric or ferromagnetic nanocubes is a promising route to produce superlattice structures for integration into next-generation devices, whereas…
Many cell functions require a concerted effort from multiple membrane proteins, for example, for signaling, cell division, and endocytosis. One contribution to their successful self-organization stems from the membrane deformations that…
In recent years the functionality of synthetic active microparticles has edged even closer to that of their biological counterparts. However, we still lack the understanding needed to recreate at the microscale key features of autonomous…
Membrane-induced interactions have been predicted to be important for the organization of membrane proteins. Measurements of the interactions between two and three membrane deforming objects have revealed their non-additive nature. They are…
Depletion forces play a role in the compaction and de-compation of chromosomal material in simple cells but it remains debatable whether they are sufficient to account for chromosomal collapse. We present coarse-grained molecular dynamics…
A simple model of an active colloid consisting of dumbbell-shaped particles that cyclically change their length without propelling themselves is proposed and analyzed. At nanoscales, it represents an idealization for bacterial cytoplasm or…
The microtubule assembly process has been extensively studied, but the underlying molecular mechanism remains poorly understood. The structure of an artificially generated sheet polymer that alternates two types of lateral contacts and that…
Within the framework of a discrete Gaussian model, we present analytical results for the interaction induced by a lamellar phase between small embedded colloids. We consider the two limits of particles strongly adherent to the adjacent…
We study the indentation of a free-standing lipid membrane suspended over a nanopore on a hydrophobic substrate by means of molecular dynamics simulations. We find that in the course of indentation, the membrane bends at the point of…
We investigate the interaction energy between two colloidal particles on or immersed in nonadsorbing polymer brushes grafted onto the substrate as a function of the separation of the particles by use of self-consistent field theory…