Related papers: Soft lamellar solid foams from ice-templating of s…
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,…
Nanoplatelets open up a wide range of possibilities for building materials with novel properties linked to their shape anisotropy. A challenge consists of controlling dynamically the order of positioning and orientation in three dimensions…
Soft materials capable of large inelastic deformation play an essential role in high-performance nacre-inspired architectured materials with a combination of stiffness, strength and toughness. The rigid "building blocks" made from glass or…
We use a coarse-grained molecular model to study the self-assembly process of complexes of cationic and neutral lipids with DNA molecules ("lipoplexes") - a promising nonviral carrier of DNA for gene therapy. We identify the resulting…
Microgels are soft microparticles that often exhibit thermoresponsiveness and feature a transformation at a critical temperature, referred to as the volume phase transition temperature. The question of whether this transformation occurs as…
The ice surface is known for presenting a very small kinetic friction coefficient, but the origin of this property remains highly controversial to date. In this work, we revisit recent computer simulations of ice sliding on atomically…
Solids deform and fluids flow, but soft glassy materials, such as emulsions, foams, suspensions, and pastes, exhibit an intricate mix of solid and liquid-like behavior. While much progress has been made to understand their elastic (small…
Ice growth has attracted great attention for its capability of fabricating hierarchically porous microstructure. However, the formation of tilted lamellar microstructure during freezing needs to be reconsidered due to the limited control of…
Particles added to a fluid interface can be used as a surface stabilizer in the food, oil and cosmetic industries. As an alternative to rigid particles, it is promising to consider highly deformable particles that can adapt their…
Liquid metals (LM) are embedded in an elastomer matrix to obtain soft composites with unique thermal, dielectric, and mechanical properties. They have applications in soft robotics, biomedical engineering, and wearable electronics. By…
Nanoparticles with hydrophobic capping ligands and amphiphilic phospholipids are both found to self-assemble into monolayer films when deposited on the air water interface. By separately measuring the anisotropic stress response of these…
We use numerical simulations to show how noninteracting hard particles binding to a deformable elastic shell may self-assemble into a variety of linear patterns. This is a result of the nontrivial elastic response to deformations of shells.…
Directional solidification of water-based solutions has emerged as a versatile technique to template hierarchical porous materials, but this nonequilibrium process remains incompletely understood. Here we use phase-field simulations to shed…
Interactions between active individuals in animal collectives lead to emergent responses that remain elusive in synthetic soft matter. Here, shape-morphing polymers are used to create bio-inspired transient solids that self-assemble with…
We study the realization of lattice models, where cold atoms and molecules move as extra particles in a dipolar crystal of trapped polar molecules. The crystal is a self-assembled floating mesoscopic lattice structure with quantum dynamics…
We study the deformation of a fluctuating crystalline sheet confined between two flat rigid walls as a simple model for layered solids where bonds among atoms {\it within} the same layer are much stronger than those {\it between} layers.…
We determine the effective behavior of a class of composites in finite-strain crystal plasticity, based on a variational model for materials made of fine parallel layers of two types. While one component is completely rigid in the sense…
We use dedicated microfluidic devices to expose soft hydrogel particles to a rapid change in the externally applied osmotic pressure and observe a non-monotonic response: After an initial rapid compression the particle slowly reswells to…
Research in soft manipulators has significantly enhanced object grasping capabilities, thanks to their adaptability to various shapes and sizes. Applying this technology to on-orbit servicing, especially during the capture and containment…
We demonstrate scaffolding of plasmonic nanoparticles by topological defects induced by colloidal microspheres to match their surface boundary conditions with a uniform far-field alignment in a liquid crystal host. Displacing energetically…