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Everyday experience shows that cellular sheets are stiffened by the presence of a pressurized gas: from bicycle inner tubes to bubble wrap, the presence of an internal pressure increases the stiffness of otherwise floppy structures. The…
An increasing number of proteins with intrinsically disordered domains have been shown to phase separate in buffer to form liquid-like phases. These protein condensates serve as simple models for the investigation of the more complex…
Understanding the concept of rheology in polymer melts with dissolved gases like CO2 is crucial in development of high quality polymer foams which are commonly manufactured by foam extrusion processes. The crystallization and rheological…
Biological hydrogels have been increasingly sought after as e.g. wound dressings or scaffolds for regenerative medicine, due to their inherent biofunctionality in biological environments. Especially in moist wound healing, the ideal…
Hydrogels hold promise in agriculture as reservoirs of water in dry soil, potentially alleviating the burden of irrigation. However, confinement in soil can markedly reduce the ability of hydrogels to absorb water and swell, limiting their…
Microrheology, the study of fluids on micron length-scales, promises to reveal insights into cellular biology, including mechanical biomarkers of disease and the interplay between biomechanics and cellular function. Here a…
Mechanical characteristics of single biological cells are used to identify and possibly leverage interesting differences among cells or cell populations. Fluidity---hysteresivity normalized to the extremes of an elastic solid or a viscous…
Hydrogels are promising systems for separation applications due to their structural characteristics (i.e. hydrophilicity and porosity). In our study, we investigate the permeation of suspensions of rigid latex particles of different sizes…
Biomimetic hydrogels based on natural polymers are a promising class of biomaterial, mimicking the natural extra-cellular matrix of biological tissues and providing cues for cell attachment, proliferation and differentiation. With a view to…
Relations between static and dynamic viscoelastic responses in gels can be very elucidating and may provide useful tools to study the behavior of bio-materials such as protein hydrogels. An important example comes from the viscoelasticity…
Cellulose ethers represent a class of water-soluble polymers widely utilized across diverse sectors, spanning from healthcare to the construction industry. This experimental study specifically delves into aqueous suspensions of…
The spacial heterogeneity of hydrogels composed of PEGDA and added polymer chains is expected to play a crucial role on their transport properties which can be exploited in filtration or tissue engineering. However little is known about the…
Cell mechanical properties are fundamental to the organism but remain poorly understood. We report a comprehensive phenomenological framework for the nonlinear rheology of single fibroblast cells: a superposition of elastic stiffening and…
Amorphous materials exhibit complex material proprteties with strongly nonlinear behaviors. Below a yield stress they behave as plastic solids, while they start to yield above a critical stress $\Sigma_c$. A key quantity controlling…
Protein-stabilised emulsion gels can be studied in the theoretical framework of colloidal gels, because both protein assemblies and droplets may be considered as soft colloids. These particles differ in their nature, size and softness, and…
The mechanics of biological tissues mainly proceeds from the cell cortex rheology. A direct, explicit link between cortex rheology and tissue rheology remains lacking, yet would be instrumental in understanding how modulations of cortical…
We report contactless measurements of the viscoelastic rheological properties of soft gels. The experiments are performed using a colloidal-probe Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) in a liquid environment and in dynamic mode. The mechanical…
The next generation of soft electronics will expand to the third dimension. This will require the integration of mechanically-compliant three-dimensional functional structures with stretchable materials. This study demonstrates…
Cellular cortex, which is a highly viscous thin cytoplasmic layer just below the cell membrane, controls the cell's mechanical properties, which can be characterized by a hydrodynamic length scale $\ell$. Cells actively regulate $\ell$ via…
Water evaporation is critically important for hydrogels in open-air applications, but theoretically modeling is difficult due to the complicated intermolecular interactions and sustained deformation. In this work, we construct a simplified…