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Ultrasound-induced degradation of soft polymeric colloids, like microgels, as well as a controlled drug release enabled by mechanoresponsive bonds, has recently attracted considerable attention. However, most examples in the literature…
Technical challenges in molecule sensing and chemical detection have created an increasing demand for transformative materials with high sensitivity and specificity. Biohybrid nanopores have attracted growing interest as they can ideally…
Microphase separation of membrane components is thought to play an important role in many physiological processes, from cell signaling to endocytosis and cellular trafficking. Here, we study how variations in the membrane composition can be…
Elastic sheets with macroscopic dimensions are easy to deform by bending and stretching. Yet shaping nanometric sheets by mechanical manipulation is hard. Here we show that nanoparticle self-assembly could be used to this end. We…
Composites are ideally suited to achieve desirable multifunctional effective properties since the best properties of different materials can be judiciously combined with designed microstructures. Here we establish cross-property relations…
Controlled atomic scale fabrication of functional devices is one of the holy grails of nanotechnology. The most promising class of techniques that enable deterministic nanodevice fabrication are based on scanning probe patterning or surface…
Lipid membranes form the barrier between the inside and outside of cells and many of their subcompartments. As such, they bind to a wide variety of nano- and micrometer sized objects and, in the presence of strong adhesive forces, strongly…
Size and shape are critical discriminators between molecular species and states. We describe a micro-chip based high-throughput imaging approach offering rapid and precise determination of molecular properties under native solution…
Cyanobacteria sequester photosynthetic enzymes into microcompartments which facilitate the conversion of carbon dioxide into sugars. Geometric similarities between these structures and self-assembling viral capsids have inspired models that…
Our understanding of the structural features of foams and emulsions has advanced significantly over the last 20 years. However, with a search for "super-stable" liquid dispersions, foam and emulsion science employs increasingly complex…
This paper deals with flow-induced shape transitions of elastic capsules. The state of the art concerning both theory and experiments is briefly reviewed starting with dynamically induced small deformation of initially spherical capsules…
Hydrogels engineered for medical use within the human body need to be delivered in a minimally invasive fashion without altering their biochemical and mechanical properties to maximize their therapeutic outcomes. In this regard, key…
Multiphase systems are ubiquitous in engineering, biology, and materials science, where understanding their complex interactions and rheological behavior is crucial for advancing applications ranging from emulsion stability to cellular…
Membrane phase-separation is a mechanism that biological membranes often use to locally concentrate specific lipid species in order to organize diverse membrane processes. Phase separation has also been explored as a tool for the design of…
One problem of non-crystalline condensed matter (soft matter) is creating the right equilibrium between elasticity and viscosity, referred to as viscoelasticity. Manifestations of that can be found in everyday live, where the…
Heterogeneities in the cell membrane due to coexisting lipid phases have been conjectured to play a major functional role in cell signaling and membrane trafficking. Thereby the material properties of multiphase systems, such as the line…
A new type of microfluidic system for biological cell manipulation, a CMOS/microfluidic hybrid, is demonstrated. The hybrid system starts with a custom-designed CMOS (complementary metal-oxide semiconductor) chip fabricated in a…
Significant progress has been made to increase access to droplet microfluidics for labs with limited microfluidics expertise or fabrication equipment. In particular, using off-the-shelf systems has been a valuable approach. However, the…
Pumping fluids without an aid of an external power source are desirable in a number of applications ranging from a cooling of microelectronic circuits to Micro Total Analysis Systems (micro-TAS). Although, several microfluidic pumps exist,…
The microscopic structure of a plant cell wall is given by cellulose microfibrils embedded in a cell wall matrix. In this paper we consider a microscopic model for interactions between viscoelastic deformations of a plant cell wall and…