Related papers: Self-organized lasers of reconfigurable colloidal …
Local rearrangements are the elements of plastic deformation in an amorphous solid. In oscillatory shear, they can switch reversibly between two distinct configurations. While these repeating relaxations are typically considered in the…
Curved structures in soft matter and biological systems commonly emerge as a result of self-assembly processes where building blocks aggregate in a controlled manner, giving rise to specific system structure and properties. Learning how to…
Biological systems have the unique ability to self-organize and generate autonomous motion and work. Motivated by this, we investigate a 2D model colloidal network that can repeatedly transition between disordered states of low connectivity…
We present stacked organic lasing heterostructures made by different species of light-emitting electrospun fibers, each able to provide optical gain in a specific spectral region. A hierarchical architecture is obtained by conformable…
We observe growth of shape-controlled potassium nanoparticles inside a random network of glass nanopores, exposed to low-power laser radiation. Visible laser light plays a dual role: it increases the desorption probability of potassium…
We report the first experimental observation of discrete time-crystal phases and crystallites in an actively mode-locked semiconductor laser. By tuning either the bias current or the modulation frequency, the system undergoes a spontaneous…
The use of colloidal supported lipid bilayers (CSLBs) has recently been extended to create colloidal joints, that - in analogy to their macroscopic counterparts - can flexibly connect colloidal particles. These novel elements enable the…
The interaction between light and matter can be controlled efficiently by structuring materials at a length scale shorter than the wavelength of interest. With the goal to build optical devices that operate at the nanoscale, plasmonics has…
Many organisms leverage an interplay between shape and activity to generate motion and adapt to their environment. Embedding such feedback into synthetic microrobots could eliminate the need for sensors, software, and actuators, yet current…
Monodisperse rod-like colloidal particles are known for spontaneously forming both nematic and smectic liquid crystal phases, but their self-assembly was typically exploited from the fundamental soft condensed matter physics perspective.…
Physical properties of composite materials can be pre-engineered by controlling their structure and composition at the mesoscale. Yet, approaches for achieving this are limited and rarely scalable. We introduce a new breed of self-assembled…
Providing artificial light and enhancing the quality of the respective light sources is of continued interest in the fields of solid state-, condensed matter, and semiconductor physics. A lot of research has been done to increase luminous…
Natural active systems routinely reshape and reorganize their environments through sustained local interactions. Examples of decentralized collective construction are common in nature, e.g., many insects achieve large-scale constructions…
Living cells dynamically modulate the local morphologies of their actin cytoskeletons to perform biological functions, including force transduction, intracellular transport, and cell division. A major challenge is to understand how diverse…
Cold atoms, driven by a laser and simultaneously coupled to the quantum field of an optical resonator, can self-organize in periodic structures. These structures are supported by the optical lattice, which emerges from the laser light they…
We show that model molecules with particular rotational symmetries can self-assemble into network structures equivalent to rhombus tilings. This assembly happens in an emergent way, in the sense that molecules spontaneously select irregular…
Lablets are autonomous microscopic particles with programmable CMOS electronics that can control electrokinetic phenomena and electrochemical reactions in solution via actuator and sensor microelectrodes. In this paper, we describe the…
Surface plasmon resonances generated in metallic nanostructures can be utilized to tailor electromagnetic fields. The precise spatial arrangement of such structures can result in surprising optical properties that are not found in any…
DNA-driven self-assembly enables precise positioning of the colloidal nanoparticles owing to specific Watson-Crick interactions. Another important feature of this self-assembly method is its reversibility by controlling the temperature of…
Functionalizing colloids with reactive DNA linkers is a versatile way of programming self-assembly. DNA selectivity provides direct control over colloid-colloid interactions allowing the engineering of structures such as complex crystals or…