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Nature is remarkably adept at using interfaces to build structures, encapsulate reagents, and regulate biological processes. Inspired by Nature, we describe flexible polymer-based ribbons, termed "mesoscale polymers" (MSPs), to modulate…
We present a theoretical description of the dynamics of a semi-flexible polymer being pulled through a nanopore by an external force acting at the pore. Our theory is based on the tensile blob picture of Pincus in which the front of the…
Advances in DNA nanotechnology have stimulated the search for simple motifs that can be used to control the properties of DNA nanostructures. One such motif, which has been used extensively in structures such as polyhedral cages,…
Dynamics of spreading of small droplets on surfaces has been studied by the molecular dynamics method. Simulations have been performed for mixtures of solvent and dimer, and solvent and tetramer droplets. For solvent particles and dimers,…
Our study aims at a better control and understanding of the transfer of a complex [DNA supercoiled plasmid - dodecyltrimethylammonium surfactant] layer from a liquid-vapour water interface onto a silicon surface without any additional…
Active polymers play a central role in many biological systems, from bacterial flagella to cellular cytoskeletons. Minimal models of semiflexible active filaments have been used to study a variety of interesting phenomena in active systems,…
Extended depth of field microscopy encodes axial information into a single acquisition through engineered point spread functions, but conventional and deep optics approaches are subject to degradation in scattering tissue. We introduce…
We investigate diffusion-limited reactions between a diffusing particle and a target site on a semiflexible polymer, a key factor determining the kinetics of DNA-protein binding and polymerization of cytoskeletal filaments. Our theory…
We use a mesoscale simulation approach to explore the impact of different capsid geometries on the packaging and ejection dynamics of polymers of different flexibility. We find that both packing and ejection times are faster for flexible…
Two-dimensional simulations are used to explore topological transitions that occur during the formation of films grown from grains that are seeded on substrates. This is done for a relatively large range of the initial value $\Phi_s$ of the…
This review summarizes recent progress in investigating polymer systems by using Differential dynamic microscopy (DDM), a rapidly emerging approach that transforms a commercial microscope by combining real-space information with the…
What can cells gain by using disordered, rather than folded, proteins in the architecture of their skeleton? Disordered proteins take multiple co-existing conformations, and often contain segments which act as random-walk-shaped polymers.…
Grafting polymer chains on nanoparticles surfaces is a well-known route to control their self assembly and distribution in a polymer matrix. A wide variety of self assembled structures are achieved by changing the grafting patterns on an…
The influence of surface constraints on the self-assembly of liquid droplets is investigated. A semi-quantitative explanation for large scale pattern formation consisting of small scale closely arranged droplets inside the large scale…
The necking instability is a precursor to tensile failure and rupture of materials. A quasistatically loaded free-standing uniaxial specimen typically exhibits necking at a single location, corresponding to a long wavelength bifurcation…
Single-filament tracing has been a valuable tool to directly determine geometrical and mechanical properties of entangled polymer networks. However, systematically verifying how the stiffness of the tracer filament or its molecular…
Photonic crystals -- a class of materials whose optical properties derive from their structure in addition to their composition -- can be created by self-assembling particles whose sizes are comparable to the wavelengths of visible light.…
Molecular dynamics simulations are used to study the spreading of binary polymer nanodroplets in a cylindrical geometry. The polymers, described by the bead-spring model, spread on a flat surface with a surface-coupled Langevin thermostat…
The mechanics of animal cells is strongly determined by stress fibers, which are contractile filament bundles that form dynamically in response to extracellular cues. Stress fibers allow the cell to adapt its mechanics to environmental…
Elastic MicroPhase Separation (EMPS) provides a simple route to create soft materials with homogeneous microstructures by leveraging the supersaturation of crosslinked polymer networks with liquids. At low supersaturation, network…