Related papers: How liquid-liquid phase separation induces active …
We propose here a new mechanism of droplet coarsening in phase-separating fluid mixtures. In contrast to the conventional understanding that there are no interactions between droplets in the late stage of spinodal decomposition, we…
In active systems, whose constituents have non-equilibrium dynamics at local level, fluid-fluid phase separation is widely observed. Examples include the formation of membraneless organelles within cells; the clustering of self-propelled…
The complicated dynamics of the contact line of a moving droplet on a solid substrate often hamper the efficient modeling of microfluidic systems. In particular, the selection of the effective boundary conditions, specifying the contact…
Phase separation has recently emerged as an important organizational principle in the dense and heterogeneous environment within living cells. Here, we use a synthetic system to show that compressive stresses in a polymer network suppress…
Controlling interfaces of phase separating fluid mixtures is key to creating diverse functional soft materials. Traditionally, this is accomplished with surface-modifying chemical agents. Using experiment and theory, we study how mechanical…
We study the time evolution of a sessile liquid droplet, which is initially put onto a solid surface in a non-equilibrium configuration and then evolves towards its equilibrium shape. We adapt here the standard approach to the dynamics of…
Liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS) is currently of great interest in cell biology. LLPS is an example of what is called an emergent phenomenon -- an idea that comes from condensed-matter physics. Emergent phenomena have the…
Microstructured surfaces that control the direction of liquid transport are not only ubiquitous in nature, but they are also central to technological processes such as fog/water harvesting, oil-water separation, and surface lubrication.…
Liquid wetting of a surface is omnipresent in nature and the advance of micro-fabrication and assembly techniques in recent years offers increasing ability to control this phenomenon. Here, we identify how surface roughness influences the…
Oil spills have posed a serious threat to our marine and ecological environment in recent times. Containment of spills proliferating via small drops merging with oceans/seas is especially difficult since their mitigation is closely linked…
Using experiments and numerical simulations, we investigate the spontaneous spreading of droplets of aqueous glycerol (Newtonian) and aqueous polymer (shear-thinning) solutions on smooth surfaces. We find that in the first millisecond the…
Proteins and nucleic acids can spontaneously self-assemble into membraneless droplet-like compartments, both in vitro and in vivo. A key component of these droplets are multi-valent proteins that possess several adhesive domains with…
Recent experimental studies of molten metal droplets wetting high temperature reactive substrates have established that the majority of triple-line motion occurs when inertial effects are dominant. In light of these studies, this paper…
Biomolecular condensates in cells are often rich in catalytically-active enzymes. This is particularly true in the case of the large enzymatic complexes known as metabolons, which contain different enzymes that participate in the same…
The spreading of a cap-shaped spherical droplet of non-Newtonian power-law liquids on a completely wettable spherical substrate is theoretically studied. Both convex spherical substrates and concave spherical cavities with smooth or rough…
Droplet breakup is important in many natural and industrial processes, but the current classification of breakup regimes, especially the intermediate breakup regime, is ambiguous. In this study, the transitions of breakup regimes for…
Nanoscale topographic features of solid surfaces can induce complex metastable behavior in colloidal and multiphase systems. Recent studies on single microparticle adsorption at liquid interfaces have reported a crossover from fast…
Phase separation of a liquid mixture embedded within an elastic network is relevant to a wide range of natural and industrial systems, including biomolecular condensates interacting with the cytoskeleton, structural colouring in bird…
Phase separation can drive spatial organization of multicomponent mixtures. For instance in developing animal embryos, effective phase separation descriptions have been used to account for the spatial organization of different tissue types.…
We develop a diffuse solid method that is versatile and accurate for modeling wetting and multiphase flows in highly complex geometries. In this scheme, we harness N + 1-component phase field models to investigate interface shapes and flow…