Related papers: Tuning flow asymmetry with bio-inspired soft leafl…
We investigate the transport dynamics of elongated microparticles in microchannel flows. While smooth-walled channels preserve the dependence of particle trajectories on initial orientation and lateral position, we show that introducing…
Many microfluidic devices use macroscopic pressure differentials to overcome viscous friction and generate flows in microchannels. In this work, we investigate how the chemical and geometric properties of the channel walls can drive a net…
Lipid vesicles consist of aqueous cores surrounded by a bilayer of phospholipids. Hybrid polymer-lipid vesicles incorporate both polymers and lipids, offering promising properties for developing pharmaceuticals, biosensors, and artificial…
The shape of a microchannel during flow through it is instrumental to understanding the physics that govern various phenomena ranging from rheological measurements of fluids to separation of particles and cells. Two commonly used approaches…
Aquatic creatures exhibit remarkable adaptations of their body to efficiently interact with the surrounding fluid. The tight coupling between their morphology, motion, and the environment are highly complex but serves as a valuable example…
Microfluidic channels are integral to biomedical technology and process engineering, offering versatility in handling fluids with complex properties, often a combination of viscous and elastic attributes. Despite significant advancements in…
Microfluidic channels have emerged as useful tools to control dynamic forcing on transported microscale objects, as encountered in emulsions, biological flows, and other soft matter systems. Tailored channel designs enable precise…
Microfluidic devices manufactured from soft polymeric materials have emerged as a paradigm for cheap, disposable and easy-to-prototype fluidic platforms for integrating chemical and biological assays and analyses. The interplay between the…
Long, shallow microchannels embedded in thick soft materials are widely used in microfluidic devices for lab-on-a-chip applications. However, the bulging effect caused by fluid--structure interactions between the internal viscous flow and…
Locally broken symmetries are used across fields to transport matter, particles and information in preferential directions. Beyond local mechanisms, spatially distributed nonlinearities in crystalline media have enabled non-reciprocal…
The performances of lubricated systems widely used in natural, biological, and artificial settings are traditionally dictated by their load bearing capacities. Here we unveil that, by exploiting a unique coupling between interfacial…
The emerging field of deformable microfluidics widely employed in the Lab-on-a-Chip and MEMS communities offers an opportunity to study a relatively under-examined physics. The main objective of this work is to provide a deeper insight into…
Diffusion of a solute along a channel is enhanced by hydrodynamic flow, a phenomenon known as Taylor dispersion. In microfluidic applications, the compliance of the channel boundaries modifies the hydrodynamic flow and thus solutal…
Soft intertwined channel systems are frequently found in fluid flow networks in nature. The passage geometry of these systems can deform due to fluid flow, which can cause the relationship between flow rate and pressure drop to deviate from…
Active processes drive and guide biological dynamics across scales -- from subcellular cytoskeletal remodelling, through tissue development in embryogenesis, to population-level bacterial colonies expansion. In each of these, biological…
The transport of bio-particles in viscous flows exhibits a rich variety of dynamical behaviour, such as morphological transitions, complex orientation dynamics or deformations. Characterising such complex behaviour under well controlled…
Exploring fluid-structure interactions is essential for understanding the physical principle underlying flow control in biological and man-made systems. Traditionally, we assume that the geometry is known, and from it, the solution to the…
Controlling interfaces of phase separating fluid mixtures is key to creating diverse functional soft materials. Traditionally, this is accomplished with surface-modifying chemical agents. Using experiment and theory, we study how mechanical…
Soft interfaces are ubiquitous in nature, governing quintessential hydrodynamics functions, like lubrication, stability and cargo transport. It is shown here how a magnetic force field at a magnetic-nonmagnetic fluid interface results in an…
We consider a phase-separating mixture of active and passive fluids and explore morphological asymmetries of the emerging dominantly bicontinous dynamic emulsion. Two-dimensional numerical simulations reveal that the geometric and…