Related papers: Active pulsatile gels: from chemical microreactor …
We present a systematic theory of chemically active emulsions in the hydrodynamic limit by constructing a thermodynamically consistent framework in which the equilibrium is broken by chemo-stating of fuel molecules. For ternary solutions…
Collective behaviour in suspensions of microswimmers is often dominated by the impact of long-ranged hydrodynamic interactions. These phenomena include active turbulence, where suspensions of pusher bacteria at sufficient densities exhibit…
Physically assembled gels have promising applications in many fields because of their tunable mechanical properties. Here, we report the mechanical properties as a function of polymer volume fraction ($\phi$) for a physical gel system…
We derive the constitutive equations of an active polar gel from a model for the dynamics of elastic molecules that link polar elements. Molecular binding kinetics induces the fluidization of the material, giving rise to Maxwell…
Thermo-responsive hydrogels are a promising material for creating controllable actuators for use in micro-scale devices, since they expand and contract significantly (absorbing or expelling fluid) in response to relatively small temperature…
We numerically study by lattice Boltzmann simulations the rheological properties of an active emulsion made of a suspension of an active polar gel embedded in an isotropic passive background. We find that the hexatic equilibrium…
Polymer gels are comprised of a three-dimensional, cross-linked network that can typically withstand the mechanical deformation associated with both swelling and de-swelling. Thus, gels can be designed with smart behaviors that require both…
We investigate the dynamics of Bose-Einstein condensate droplets composed of $^{164}$Dy atoms formed in a double-well potential following removal of the interwell barrier. By solving the dipolar Gross-Pitaevskii equation, we determine phase…
We develop a double mean-field theory for charged macrogels immersed in electrolyte solutions in the spirit of the cell model approach. We first demonstrate that the equilibrium sampling of a single explicit coarse-grained charged polymer…
We outline a concept of self-assembled soft matter devices based on micro-fluidics, which use surfactant bilayer membranes as their main building blocks, arrested in geometric structures provided by top-down lithography. Membranes form…
We investigate the collective behavior of suspended thermoresponsive microgels, that expel solvent and subsequently decrease in size upon heating. Using a binary mixture of differently thermoresponsive microgels, we demonstrate how…
We present a new computational methodology for the investigation of gel electrophoresis of polyelectrolytes. We have developed the method initially to incorporate sliding motion of tight parts of a polymer pulled by an electric field into…
A liquid marble is a liquid droplet coated by a hydrophobic power. The liquid marble does not wet adjacent surfaces and therefore can be manipulated as a dry soft body. A Belousov-Zhabotinsky (BZ) reaction is an oscillatory chemical…
We investigate the dynamics of alginate gels, an important class of biopolymer-based viscoelastic materials, by combining mechanical tests and non-conventional, time-resolved light scattering methods. Two relaxation modes are observed upon…
A theoretical model of electromigrative, diffusive and convectivetransport polymer-gel composites is presented. Bulk properties are derived from the standard electrokinetic model with an impenetrable charged sphere embedded in an…
We employ computer simulations to unveil the translational and rotational dynamics of the self-driven chemically symmetric and asymmetric rigid dumbbells in two-dimensional polymer gel. Our results show that activity or the self-propulsion…
With exquisite precision and reproducibility, cells orchestrate the cooperative action of thousands of nanometer-sized molecular motors to carry out mechanical tasks at much larger length scales, such as cell motility, division and…
Active matter locally converts chemical energy into mechanical work and, for this reason, it provides new mechanisms of pattern formation. In particular, active gels made of protein motors and filaments are far-from-equilibrium systems that…
We study swelling and structural properties of ionic microgel suspensions within a comprehensive coarse-grained model that combines the polymeric and colloidal natures of microgels as permeable, compressible, charged spheres governed by…
We present a generic formulation of the continuum elasticity of an isotropic crosslinked active gel. The gel is described by a two-component model consisting of an elastic network coupled frictionally to a permeating fluid. Activity is…