Related papers: Elastocapillary coiling of an elastic rod inside a…
Drops of active liquid crystal have recently shown the ability to self-propel, which was associated with topological defects in the orientation of active filaments [Sanchez {\em et al.}, Nature {\bf 491}, 431 (2013)]. Here, we study the…
Capillary forces are involved in a variety of natural phenomena, ranging from droplet breakup to the physics of clouds. The forces from surface tension can also be exploited in industrial application provided the length scales involved are…
Colloidal particles at complex fluid interfaces and within films assemble to form ordered structures with high degrees of symmetry via interactions that include capillarity, elasticity, and other fields like electrostatic charge. Here we…
We investigate the evaporation of a two-dimensional droplet on a solid surface. The solid is flat but with smooth chemical variations that lead to a space-dependent local contact angle. We perform a detailed bifurcation analysis of the…
Cells and other soft particles are often forced to flow in confined geometries in both laboratory and natural environments, where the elastic deformation induces an additional drag and pressure drop across the particle. In contrast with…
A weakly deformable droplet impinging on a rigid surface rebounds if the surface is intrinsically hydrophobic or if the gas film trapped underneath the droplet is able to keep the interfaces from touching. A simple, physically motivated…
The effective capillary interaction potentials for small colloidal particles trapped at the surface of liquid droplets are calculated analytically. Pair potentials between capillary monopoles and dipoles, corresponding to particles floating…
The interfacial mechanics of soft elastic networks play a central role in biological and technological contexts. Yet, effects of solid capillarity have remained controversial, primarily due to the strain-dependent surface energy. Here we…
Understanding and harnessing the coupling between lubrication pressure and elasticity provides materials design strategies for applications such as adhesives, coatings, microsensors, and biomaterials. Elastic deformation of compliant solids…
This research introduces a new drop fluidics, which uses a deformable and stretchable elastomeric film as the platform, instead of the commonly used rigid supports. Such a soft film impregnated with magnetic particles can be modulated with…
We consider two minimal models of active fluid droplets that exhibit complex dynamics including steady motion, deformation, rotation and oscillating motion. First we consider a droplet with a concentration of active contractile matter…
Capillarity-driven self-assembly at fluidic interfaces offers a scalable route to large, reconfigurable materials. Microscale particles with high horizontal-to-vertical aspect ratios become attractive building blocks for shape-directed…
Plants and insects use slender conical structures to transport and collect small droplets, which are propelled along the conical structures due to capillary action. These droplets can deposit a fluid film during their motion, but despite…
We study an elasticity model for compressed protein monolayers or particle rafts at a liquid interface. Based on the microscopic view of hard-core particles with soft shells, a bead-spring model is formulated and analyzed in terms of…
We study here the microscopic deformations of elastic lamellae constituting a superhydrophobic substrate under different wetting conditions of a sessile droplet using electrowetting. The deformation profiles of the lamellae are…
An adhesively stressed thin film of a soft hydrogel confined between two rigid flat substrates auto-roughens with its dominant wavelength exhibiting pronounced dependence on the film thickness (H). A linear stability analysis confirmed that…
Contact of a fluid with a solid or an elastic wall is investigated. The wall exerts molecular forces on the fluid which is locally strongly nonhomogeneous. The problem is approached with a fluid energy of the second gradient form and a wall…
We investigate the evolution of a system of colloidal particles, trapped at a fluid interface and interacting via capillary attraction, as function of the range of the capillary interaction and temperature. We address the collapse of an…
Biological cells use droplets to separate components and spatially control their interior. Experiments demonstrate that the complex, crowded cellular environment affects the droplet arrangement and their sizes. To understand this behavior,…
Super-cooled liquids are characterized by their fragility: the slowing down of the dynamics under cooling is more sudden and the jump of specific heat at the glass transition is generally larger in fragile liquids than in strong ones.…