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Active matter comprised of self-propelled interacting units holds a major promise for extraction of useful work from its seemingly chaotic out-of-equilibrium dynamics. Streamlining active matter to produce work is especially important at…
Through the utilization of smart materials and well-designed structures, functional surfaces have been developed to enable small-scale liquid/solid manipulation tasks, thereby facilitating crucial applications in the fields of…
Monodispersed magnetite (Fe3O4) nanoparticles were synthesized. Transmission electron microscopy study shows that the nanoparticles are in the shape of Wagner-Seitz crystals. The magnetite nanoparticles self-assemble into body-centered…
One of the major challenges in modern robotics is controlling micromanipulation by active and adaptive materials. In the respiratory system, such actuation enables pathogen clearance by means of motile cilia. While various types of…
The biaxial phase in nematic liquid crystals has been elusive for several decades after its prediction in the 1970s. A recent experimental breakthrough was achieved by Liu et al. [PNAS 113, 10479 (2016)] in a liquid crystalline medium with…
Colloidal assembly at fluid interfaces has a great potential for the bottom-up fabrication of novel structured materials. However, challenges remain in realizing controllable and tunable assembly of particles into diverse structures.…
Topological phases in magnetic materials offer novel tunability of topological properties via varying the underlying magnetism. We show that three dimensional Kitaev materials can provide a great opportunity for controlling…
We exploit theoretically a magneto-controlled nonlinear optical material which contains ferromagnetic nanoparticles with a non-magnetic metallic nonlinear shell in a host fluid. Such an optical material can have anisotropic linear and…
We study the self-assembly of magnetic colloids using the Stockmayer (SM) model characterized by short-range Lennard-Jones interactions and long-range dipole-dipole interactions. Using molecular dynamics simulations, we design cooling…
Colloidal particles suspended in liquid crystals can exhibit various effective anisotropic interactions that can be tuned and utilized in self-assembly processes. We simulate a two-dimensional system of hard disks suspended in a solution of…
Machines enabled the Industrial Revolution and are central to modern technological progress: A machine's parts transmit forces, motion, and energy to one another in a predetermined manner. Today's engineering frontier, building artificial…
Colloidal membranes, self assembled monolayers of aligned rod like molecules, offer a template for designing membranes with definite shapes and curvature, and possibly new functionalities in the future. Often the constituent rods, due to…
Soft materials with a liquid component are an emerging paradigm in materials design. The incorporation of a liquid phase, such as water, liquid metals, or complex fluids, into solid materials imparts unique properties and characteristics…
Colloidal gels are prime examples of functional materials exhibiting disordered, amorphous, yet meta-stable forms. They maintain stability through short-range attractive forces and their material properties are tunable by external forces.…
Melting of two-dimensional (2D) equilibrium crystals, from superconducting vortex lattices to colloidal structures, is a complex phenomenon characterized by the sequential loss of positional and orientational order. Whereas melting…
Disclinations lines play a key role in many physical processes, from the fracture of materials to the formation of the early universe. Achieving versatile control over disclinations is key to developing novel electro-optical devices,…
Unlike molecular crystals, soft self-assembled fibres, micelles, vesicles, etc., exhibit a certain order in the arrangement of their constitutive monomers, but also high structural dynamicity and variability. Defects and disordered local…
Self-shaping of curved structures, especially those involving flexible thin layers, has attracted increasing attention because of their broad potential applications in e.g. nanoelectromechanical/micro-electromechanical systems (NEMS/MEMS),…
Rod-shaped colloids with attractive tips can form linear aggregates that may subsequently undergo hierarchical self-assembly into nematic fluids. Inspired by recent modelling efforts on chromonic liquid crystals, composed of discotic…
We propose electrically tunable hybrid metamaterial consisting of special wire grid immersed into nematic liquid crystal. The plasma-like permittivity of the structure can be substantially varied due to switching of the liquid crystal…