Related papers: Membrane tubulation by elongated and patchy nanopa…
Motivated by observations of heterogeneous domain structure on the surface of cells, we consider a minimal model to describe the dynamics of phase separation on the surface of a spherical particle. Finite-size effects on the curved particle…
Elastic crystalline membranes exhibit a buckling transition from sphere to polyhedron. However, their morphologies are restricted to convex polyhedra and are difficult to externally control. Here, we study morphological changes of closed…
Polymer brush-grafted nanoparticles have significant application value in fields such as gene therapy and targeted drug delivery. A profound understanding of the interaction mechanisms between these particles and cell membranes represents a…
Nano-particle agglomeration plays an important role in processes such as spray drying and particle flame synthesis. These processes have in common that nano-particles collide at low concentrations and get irreversibly linked at the point of…
Optically-levitated dielectric particles can serve as ultra-sensitive detectors of feeble forces and torques, as tools for use in quantum information science, and as a testbed for quantum coherence in macroscopic systems. Knowledge of the…
Understanding and manipulating the interactions between foreign bodies and cell membranes during endo- and phagocytosis is of paramount importance, not only for the fate of living cells but also for numerous biomedical applications. This…
It has recently been proposed that proteins embedded in lipidic bio-membranes can spontaneously self-organize into stable small clusters, or membrane nano-domains, due to the competition between short-range attractive and longer-range…
Here, extending our previous work on this topic, we derive a dynamic closed-form dispersion relation for a rigorous analysis of guided wave propagation along coupled parallel linear arrays of plasmonic nanoparticles, operating as optical…
We investigate the absorption of diffusing molecules in a fluid-filled spherical beaker that contains many small reactive traps. The molecules are absorbed either by hitting a trap or by escaping via the beaker walls. In the physical…
The permeability is one of the most fundamental transport properties in soft matter physics, material engineering, and nanofluidics. Here we report by means of Langevin simulations of ideal penetrants in a nanoscale membrane made of a fixed…
Particle stabilized emulsions have received an enormous interest in the recent past, but our understanding of the dynamics of emulsion formation is still limited. For simple spherical particles, the time dependent growth of fluid domains is…
Aggregation of carbon nanotubes dispersed in nematic liquid crystalline medium is discussed. A model is proposed, which assumes that the aggregates consist of a "skeleton" formed by stochastically arranged nanotubes and a "shell" ("coat")…
Many lipid membrane-mediated transport processes--such as mechanically-gated channel activation and solute transport--involve structural and dynamical features on membrane thickness length scales. Most existing membrane models, however,…
The fabrication of versatile building blocks that are reliably self-assemble into desired ordered and disordered phases is amongst the hottest topics in contemporary material science. To this end, microscopic units of varying complexity,…
We present a model for pore stabilization in membranes without surface tension. Whereas an isolated pore is always unstable (since it either shrinks tending to re-seal or grows without bound til to membrane disintegration), it is shown that…
Macromolecular crowding can influence polymer shapes, which is important for understanding the thermodynamic stability of polymer solutions and the structure and function of biopolymers (proteins, RNA, DNA) under confinement. We explore the…
We consider collective dynamics of self-propelling particles in two dimensions. They can align themselves according to the direction of propulsion of their neighbours, together with a random perturbation (i.e. rotational fluctuation). They…
The charge and potential distributions for insulating particles approaching a substrate with regular insulating structures are studied by particle-in-cell numerical simulations. An elongated particle and substrate with elongated structures…
Cell membranes separate the cell interior from the external environment. They are constituted by a variety of lipids; their composition determines the dynamics of membrane proteins and affects the ability of the cells to adapt. Even though…
We use a coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulation to investigate the interaction between neutral or charged nanoparticles (NPs) and a vesicle consisting of neutral and negatively charged lipids. We focus on the interaction strengths of…