Related papers: Porous membranes built up from hydrophilic poly(io…
Drying of fluids undergoing sol-gel transition in porous media, a process crucial for the consolidation of damaged porous structures in cultural heritage, often leads to skin formation at the surface. This phenomenon significantly hinders…
Amphipathic peptides are considered promising antibiotics because of their ability to form pores in bacterial membranes. In two companion papers, we analyzed both experimentally and theoretically the mechanisms and consequences of the…
The shape transformations of fluid membranes induced by curved protein rods are studied using meshless membrane simulations. The rod assembly at low rod density induces a flat membrane tube and oblate vesicle. It is found that the…
Polymer solutions are often injected in porous media for applications such as oil recovery and groundwater remediation. As the fluid navigates the tortuous pore space, elastic stresses build up, causing the flow to become unstable at…
Ions transiting biomembranes might pass readily from water through ion-specific membrane proteins if those protein channels provide environments similar to the aqueous solution hydration environment. Indeed, bulk aqueous solution is an…
An elastic membrane that is forced to reside in a container smaller than its natural size will deform and, upon further volume reduction, eventually crumple. The crumpled state is characterized by the localization of energy in a complex…
Removing hazardous particulate and macromolecular contaminants as well as viruses with sizes from a few nm up to the 100-nm-range from water and air is crucial for ensuring sufficient sanitation and hygiene for a growing world population.…
We investigate with computer simulations the critical radius of pores in a lipid bilayer membrane. Ilton et al. (2016) recently showed that nucleated pores in a homopolymer film can increase or decrease in size, depending on whether they…
We consider sedimented at a solid wall particles that are immersed in water containing small additives of photosensitive ionic surfactants. It is shown that illumination with an appropriate wavelength, a beam intensity profile, shape and…
One of the most promising applications in nanoscience is the design of new materials to improve water permeability and selectivity of nanoporous membranes. Understanding the molecular architecture behind these fascinating structures and how…
Electroporation is a physical method to induce the uptake of therapeutic drugs and DNA, by eukaryotic cells and tissues. The phenomena behind electro-mediated membrane permeabilization to plasmid DNA have been shown to be significantly more…
We present a theory for the interaction between active particles and a passive flexible membrane. By explicitly solving for the pressure exerted by the active particles, we show that they reduce the membrane tension and bending modulus and…
We study pore nucleation in a model membrane system, a freestanding polymer film. Nucleated pores smaller than a critical size close, while pores larger than the critical size grow. Holes of varying size were purposefully prepared in liquid…
Flow through porous, elastically deforming media is present in a variety of natural contexts ranging from large-scale geophysics to cellular biology. In the case of incompressible constituents, the porefluid pressure acts as a Lagrange…
Acid-induced release of stored ions from polyacrylic acid hydrogels (with a free surface fully permeable to the ion and acid flux) was observed to increase the gel osmotic pressure that leads to rapid, temporary swelling faster than the…
In multicellular organisms, epithelial cells form layers separating compartments responsible for different physiological functions. At the early stage of epithelial layer formation, each cell of an aggregate defines an inner and an outer…
We use Metropolis Monte Carlo and umbrella sampling to calculate the free energies of interaction of two methane molecules and their charged derivatives in cylindrical water-filled pores. Confinement strongly alters the interactions between…
Membrane shape fluctuations induce attractive interactions between rigid inclusions. Previous analytical studies showed that the fluctuation-induced pair interactions are rather small compared to thermal energies, but also that multi-body…
We demonstrate and explain a simple and efficient way to remove gas bubbles from liquid-filled microchannels, by integrating a hydrophobic porous membrane on top of the microchannel. A prototype chip is manufactured in hard, transparent…
Pulsed-laser dry printing of noble-metal microrings with a tunable internal porous structure, which can be revealed via an ion-beam etching post-procedure, was demonstrated. Abundance and average size of the pores inside the microrings were…