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Related papers: Droplet Ripening in Concentration Gradients

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We present a thermodynamically consistent model for chemically driven running drops on a solid substrate with reversible substrate adsorption of a wettability-changing chemical species. We consider drops confined to a vertical gap, thereby…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2026-04-09 Justus Niehoff , Florian Voss , Uwe Thiele

RNA molecules in living cells form what look like liquid droplets formed by liquid/liquid phase separation. But unlike the molecules in conventional phase separating mixtures, RNA molecules are transported by molecular motors that consume…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2015-03-27 Richard P. Sear

From microfluidics to fog-harvesting applications, tiny droplets are transported along various solid substrates including hairs, threads, grooves, and other light structures. Driven by gravity, a droplet sliding along a vertical fiber is a…

Biological cells and synthetic analogues use liquid-liquid phase separation to dynamically compartmentalize their environment for various applications. In many cases, multiple droplets need to coexist, and their size needs to be controlled,…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2025-12-03 Guido Kusters , David Zwicker

Evaporating suspensions of colloidal particles lead to the formation of a variety of patterns, ranging from a left-over ring of a dried coffee drop to uniformly distributed solid pigments left behind wet paint. To characterize the…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2014-11-19 C. Nadir Kaplan , L. Mahadevan

We explore the evolution of the aggregate size distribution in systems where aggregates grow by diffusive accretion of mass. Supersaturation is controlled in such a way that the overall aggregate volume grows linearly in time. Classical…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2014-03-12 J. Vollmer , A. Papke , M. Rohloff

Active transport of biomolecular condensates and cell migration in collectives are fundamental to development, homeostasis, and processes such as cancer progression, wound healing, and infection response. Yet how these assemblies are…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2025-10-24 Hossein Vahid , Jens-Uwe Sommer , Abhinav Sharma

These lecture notes describe a basic theory of chemically active droplets, which are droplets kept away from equilibrium by driven chemical reactions. The notes assume a basic familiarity with equilibrium thermodynamics of phase separation,…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2024-07-16 David Zwicker

The contact angle of a fluid droplet on an heterogeneous surface is analysed using the statistical dynamics of the spreading contact line. The statistical properties of the final droplet radius and contact angle are obtained through…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2015-06-05 Mikko J. Alava , Martin Dube

We describe a setup to perform systematic studies on the spreading of droplets of complex fluids under microgravity conditions. Tweaking the gravitational acceleration under which droplets are deposited provides access to different regimes…

Phase separation under non-equilibrium conditions is exploited by biological cells to organize their cytoplasm but remains poorly understood as a physical phenomenon. Here, we study a ternary fluid model in which phase-separating molecules…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2018-02-21 Jean David Wurtz , Chiu Fan Lee

We analyze the migration characteristics of a droplet in an oscillatory flow field in a parallel plate micro-confinement. Using phase filed formalism, we capture the dynamical evolution of the droplet over a wide range of the frequency of…

Fluid Dynamics · Physics 2016-02-17 Kaustav Chaudhury , Shubhadeep Mandal , Suman Chakraborty

Deformed droplets are ubiquitous in various industrial applications, such as inkjet printing, lab-on-a-chip devices, and spray cooling, and can fundamentally affect the involved applications both favorably and unfavorably. Here, we employ…

Biomolecular condensates are small droplets forming spontaneously in biological cells via phase separation. They play a role in many cellular processes, but it is unclear how cells control them. Cellular regulation often relies on…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2024-03-15 Jan Kirschbaum , David Zwicker

Numerous cell-types have shown a remarkable ability to detect and move along gradients in stiffness of an underlying substrate -- a process known as durotaxis. The mechanisms underlying durotaxis are still unresolved, but generally believed…

The cellular environment, characterized by its intricate composition and spatial organization, hosts a variety of organelles, ranging from membrane-bound ones to membraneless structures that are formed through liquid-liquid phase…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2026-03-09 Gregor Häfner , Marcus Müller

Particles confined in droplets are called compound particles. They are encountered in various biological and soft matter systems. Hydrodynamics can play a decisive role in determining the configuration and stability of these multiphase…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2019-08-23 Sravana Chaithanya , Sumesh P Thampi

Phase field theory is widely used to model multi-phase flows. A drop can shrink or grow spontaneously due to the redistribution of interface and bulk energies to minimize the system energy. In this paper, the spontaneous behaviour of a drop…

Fluid Dynamics · Physics 2019-12-18 Chunhua Zhang , Zhaoli Guo

A droplet placed on a hydrophilic conical fiber tends to move toward the end of larger radii due to capillary action. Experimental investigations are performed to explore the dynamics of droplets with varying viscosities and volumes on…

Fluid Dynamics · Physics 2024-09-04 Yixiao Mao , Chengxi Zhao , Kai Mu , Kai Li , Ting Si

Cells operate in part by compartmentalizing chemical reactions. For example, recent work has shown that chromatin, the material that contains the cell's genome, can auto-regulate its structure by utilizing reaction products (proteins, RNA)…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2024-10-30 Sam Wilken , Gabrielle R. Abraham , Omar A. Saleh