Related papers: Elastic interactions between topological defects i…
Active materials are capable of converting free energy into directional motion, giving rise to striking dynamical phenomena. Developing a general understanding of their structure in relation to the underlying non-equilibrium physics would…
Even though chiral nematic phases were the first liquid crystals experimentally observed more than a century ago, the origin of the thermodynamic stability of cholesteric states is still unclear. In this Letter we address the problem by…
Colloidal gel networks are disordered elastic solids that can form even in extremely dilute particle suspensions. With interaction strengths comparable to the thermal energy, their stress-bearing network can locally restructure via breaking…
Colloidal gels are formed through the aggregation of attractive particles, whose size ranges from 10~nm to a few micrometers, suspended in a liquid. Such gels are ubiquitous in everyday life applications, from food products to paints or…
We study the self-assembly of colloidal microgel particles at a quasi-two-dimensional air-water interface of a drying droplet. Using bright-field microscopy, we demonstrate that increasing particle elasticity drives interfacial organization…
We have studied the nucleation and the physical properties of a -1/2 wedge disclination line near the free surface of a confined nematic liquid crystal. The position of the disclination line has been related to the material parameters…
Liquid crystals generally support orientational singularities of the director field known as topological defects. These latter modifiy transport properties in their vicinity as if the geometry was non-Euclidean. We present a state of the…
Direct analytical and numerical calculation show that two-electron atomic configuration can be unstable with respect to a static or dynamic shift of the electron shells. This enables to develop a so called non-rigid shell model for a…
Nonlinear thermoelastic systems play a crucial role in understanding thermal conductivity, stresses, elasticity, and temperature interactions. This research focuses on finding solutions to these systems in their fractional forms, which is a…
The capillary forces exerted by liquid drops and bubbles on a soft solid are directly measured using molecular dynamics simulations. The force on the solid by the liquid near the contact line is not oriented along the liquid vapor interface…
We describe a numerical method to simulate an elastic shell immersed in a viscous incompressible fluid. The method is developed as an extension of the immersed boundary method using shell equations based on the Kirchhoff-Love and the planar…
The self-propulsion of +1/2 topological defects is a hallmark of active nematic fluids, where the defects are advected by the flow field they themselves generate. In this paper we propose a minimal model for defect self-propulsion in a…
We summarize some recent results of the authors and their collaborators, regarding the derivation of thin elastic shell models (for shells with mid-surface of arbitrary geometry) from the variational theory of 3d nonlinear elasticity. We…
Colloidal membranes are monolayer assemblies of rodlike particles that capture the long-wavelength properties of lipid bilayer membranes on the colloidal scale. Recent experiments on colloidal membranes formed by chiral rodlike viruses…
The structure of DNA in the nucleosome core particle is studied using an elastic model that incorporates anisotropy in the bending energetics and twist-bend coupling. Using the experimentally determined structure of nucleosomal DNA [T.J.…
The complex physics of self-assembly in colloidal crystals on deformable interfaces and surfaces poses interesting possibilities for the designability and synthesis of next-generation metamaterials. The goal of this article is to…
Non-equilibrium dynamics of topological defects can be used as a fundamental propulsion mechanism in microscopic active matter. Here, we demonstrate swimming of topological defect-propelled colloidal particles in (passive) nematic fluids…
We study pattern formation in gels undergoing simultaneous phase separation and orientational ordering. A 2D numerical simulation is performed using a minimal model of nonlinear elasticity with density-anisotropy coupling. For strong…
Recent studies point out far-reaching connections between the topological characteristics of structural glasses and their material properties, paralleling results in quantum physics that highlight the relevance of the nature of the…
Softer means stickier for solid adhesives, because material compliance facilitates close contact between non-conformal surfaces. Recent discoveries have revealed that soft materials can exhibit a rich array of new physics arising from…