Related papers: Structuring Stress for Active Materials Control

We aim to identify the control principles governing the adaptable formation of non-equilibrium structures in actomyosin networks. We build a phenomenological model and predict that biasing the energy dissipated by molecular motors should…

Active constituents burn fuel to sustain individual motion, giving rise to collective effects that are not seen in systems at thermal equilibrium, such as phase separation with purely repulsive interactions. There is a great potential in…

We investigate the effect of an anisotropic substrate on the turbulent dynamics of a simulated two dimensional active nematic. This is introduced as an anisotropic friction and an effective anisotropic viscosity, with the orientation of the…

Transport at microscopic length scales is essential in biological systems and various technologies, including microfluidics. Recent experiments achieved self-organized transport phenomena in microtubule active matter using light to modulate…

The cytoskeletal component actomyosin is a canonical example of active matter since the powerstroke cycle locally converts chemical energy in the form of adenoside triphosphate (ATP) into mechanical work for remodelling. Observing myosin II…

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…

The ability of many living systems to actively self-propel underlies critical biomedical, environmental, and industrial processes. While such active transport is well-studied in uniform settings, environmental complexities such as geometric…

Material renewability in active living systems, such as in cells and tissues, can drive the large-scale patterning of forces, with distinctive phenotypic consequences. This is especially significant in the cell cytoskeleton, where multiple…

The actin cytoskeleton is an active semi-flexible polymer network whose non-equilibrium properties coordinate both stable and contractile behaviors to maintain or change cell shape. While myosin motors drive the actin cytoskeleton…

Confining a liquid crystal imposes topological constraints on the orientational order, allowing global control of equilibrium systems by manipulation of anchoring boundary conditions. In this article, we investigate whether a similar…

Active matter consumes energy from the environment and transforms it into mechanical work. Notable examples from biology include cell division, bacterial swarms, and muscle contraction. In this work, we investigate the nature of active…

Biological functions rely on ordered structures and intricately controlled collective dynamics. In contrast to systems in thermodynamic equilibrium, order is typically established and sustained in stationary states by continuous dissipation…

We consider disordered solids in which the microscopic elements can deform plastically in response to stresses on them. We show that by driving the system periodically, this plasticity can be exploited to train in desired elastic…

Dense active matter, from bacterial suspensions and microtubule bundles driven by motor proteins to cellular monolayers and synthetic Janus particles, is characterised by mesoscale turbulence, the emergence of chaotic flow structures. By…

We simulate the nonlocal Stokesian hydrodynamics of an elastic filament which is active due a permanent distribution of stresslets along its contour. A bending instability of an initially straight filament spontaneously breaks flow symmetry…

The cytoskeleton relies on diverse populations of motors, filaments, and binding proteins acting in concert to enable non-equilibrium processes ranging from mitosis to chemotaxis. Its versatile reconfigurability, programmed by interactions…

Chemically or optically powered active matter plays an increasingly important role in materials design but its computational potential has yet to be explored systematically. The competition between energy consumption and dissipation imposes…

Equilibrium self-assembly and conventional materials processing techniques fall far short of mimicking dynamic self-actuating processes that are commonplace throughout biology. To bridge the gap between living and synthetic matter, we study…

Active matter comprises self-driven units, such as bacteria and synthetic microswimmers, that can spontaneously form complex patterns and assemble into functional microdevices. These processes are possible thanks to the out-of-equilibrium…

Activity and autonomous motion are fundamental in living and engineering systems. This has stimulated the new field of active matter in recent years, which focuses on the physical aspects of propulsion mechanisms, and on motility-induced…