Related papers: Biofilm Growth Under Elastic Confinement
We study a model of contraction-based cell motility inside a microchannel to investigate the regulation of cell polarization and motion by the mechanical resistance of the environment. A positive feedback between the asymmetry of the…
A biofilm is a microbial city. It consists of bacteria embedded in an extracellular polymeric substance (EPS) that functions as a protective barrier. Quorum sensing (QS) is a method of bacterial communication, where autoinducers (AIs)…
Conventional vapor deposition or epitaxial growth of two-dimensional (2D) materials and heterostructures is conducted in a large chamber in which masses transport from the source to the substrate. Here we report a chamber-free, on-chip…
Optimal embedding in the three-dimensional space of exponentially growing squeezed surfaces, like plants leaves, or 2D colonies of exponentially reproducing cells, is considered in the framework of conformal approach. It is shown that the…
Periodic wrinkling of a rigid capping layer on a deformable substrate provides a useful method for templating surface topography for a variety of novel applications. Many experiments have studied wrinkle formation during the compression of…
Growth and folding in one-layered model tissue sheets are studied in a stochastic, lattice-free single cell model which considers the discrete cellular structure of the tissue, and a coarse grained analytical approach. The polarity of the…
Information processing in the mammalian brain relies on a careful regulation of the membrane potential dynamics of its constituent neurons, which propagates across the neuronal tissue via electrical signalling. We recently reported the…
We use real-time reflection high energy electron diffraction intensity oscillation to establish the Te-rich growth dynamics of topological insulator thin films of Bi2Te3 on Si(111) substrate by molecular beam epitaxy. In situ angle resolved…
During colony growth, complex interactions regulate the bacterial orientation, leading to the formation of large-scale ordered structures, including topological defects and microdomains. These structures may benefit bacterial strains,…
A strained epitaxial film deposited on a deformable substrate undergoes a morphological instability relaxing the elastic energy by surface diffusion. The nonlinear and nonlocal dynamical equations of such films with wetting interactions are…
The growth of confined magnetic films with ferromagnetic interactions between nearest-neighbor spins is studied in a stripped $(1+1)-$dimensional rectangular geometry. Magnetic films are grown irreversibly by adding spins at the boundaries…
Bi(0001) films with thicknesses up to several bilayers (BLs) are grown on Se-terminated Bi$_2$Se$_3$(0001) surfaces, and low energy electron diffraction (LEED), low energy ion scattering (LEIS) and atomic force microscopy (AFM) are used to…
As a novel and promising 2D material, bismuth oxyselenide (Bi$_2$O$_2$Se) has demonstrated significant potential to overcome existing technical barriers in various electronic device applications, due to its unique physical properties like…
To study the compressional forces exerted by a bundle of living stiff filaments pressing on a surface, akin to the case of an actin bundle in filopodia structures, we have performed particulate Molecular Dynamics simulations of a grafted…
Spontaneous growth of long-wavelength deformations is a defining feature of active fluids with orientational order. We investigate the effect of biaxial rectangular confinement on the instability of initially shear-aligned 3D isotropic…
Nonlinear stiffening is a ubiquitous property of major types of biopolymers that make up the extracellular matrices (ECM) including collagen, fibrin and basement membrane. Within the ECM, many types of cells such as fibroblasts and cancer…
The crystal growth of isotactic polystyrene (it-PS) is investigated in very thin, 11 nm thick films. The it-PS crystals grown in the thin films show quite different morphology from that in the bulk. With decreasing crystallization…
Nanoscale and microscale confinement of biopolymers naturally occurs in cells and has been recently achieved in artificial structures designed for nanotechnological applications. Here, we present an extensive theoretical investigation of…
It is frequent for active or living entities to find themselves embedded in a surrounding medium. Resulting composite systems are usually classified as either active fluids or active solids. Yet, in reality, particularly in the biological…
It is shown that nanotubes with thicker walls can be grown from strongly bonded multi-layered structures only in accord with some basic crystallographic principles. Either the diameters of such tubes remain large in comparison with the…