Related papers: Floppy hydrated salt microcrystals
The evaporation of a droplet induces variety of ordered patterns near the contact line between the droplet and a substrate. This pattern formation involves both the behavior of colloidal suspensions and interactions between a droplet and a…
In recent years, certain molecular crystals have been reported to possess surprising flexibility by undergoing significant elastic or plastic deformation in response to mechanical loads. However, despite this experimental evidence, there…
Ion specificity and related Hofmeister effects, ubiquitous in aqueous systems, can have spectacular consequences in hydrated clays, where ion-specific nanoscale surface forces can determine large scale cohesive, swelling and shrinkage…
The properties of crystals consisting of several components can be widely tuned. Often solid solutions are produced, where substitutional or interstitional disorder determines the crystal thermodynamic and mechanical properties. The…
This short review is devoted to the simple process of drying a multi-component droplet consisting of a complex fluid containing a salt. These processes provide a fascinating subject for study. The explanation of the rich variety of patterns…
Chiral active materials are abundant in nature, including the cytoskeleton with attached motor proteins, rotary clusters of bacteria flagella, and self-spinning starfish embryos. These materials break both time reversal and mirror-image…
The geological storage of hydrogen (H_2) requires reliable long-term caprock sealing, yet the nanoscale interactions between H_2 and clay minerals remain critically underexplored despite their importance for storage security. This lack of…
The swimming behavior of bacteria and other microorganisms is sensitive to the physical properties of the fluid in which they swim. Mucus, biofilms, and artificial liquid-crystalline solutions are all examples of fluids with some degree of…
Dynamic structuring of water is a key player in a large class of processes underlying biochemical and technological developments today, the latter often involving electric fields. However, the anisotropic coupling between the water…
Soft particulate gels include materials we can eat, squeeze, or 3D print. From foods to bio-inks to cement hydrates, these gels are composed of a small amount of particulate matter (proteins, polymers, colloidal particles, or agglomerates…
A characteristic property of many soft matter systems is an ultrasoft effective interaction between their structural units. This softness often leads to complex behavior. In particular, ultrasoft systems under pressure demonstrate…
Stressed dislocation pattern formation in crystal plasticity at finite deformation is demonstrated for the first time. Size effects are also demonstrated within the same mathematical model. The model involves two extra material parameters…
We propose a physical mechanism to explain the crystal symmetries found in macromolecular and supramolecular micellar materials. We argue that the packing entropy of the hard micellar cores is frustrated by the entropic interaction of their…
Underground storage of hydrogen and ammonia in geological formations is essential for renewable energy integration, but salt precipitation during gas injection may threaten storage performance. While extensively studied for CO2 systems,…
Nanocrystals, used as building blocks, may self-assemble in long-range ordered assemblies socalled supracrystals. Different structures FCC, BCC but also Frank-Kasper phases have been observed and the roles of the soft ligands surrounding…
Salt water is ubiquitous, playing crucial roles in geological and physiological processes. Despite centuries of investigations, whether or not water's structure is drastically changed by dissolved ions is still debated. Based on density…
The competition between thermal fluctuations and potential forces is the foundation of our understanding of phase transitions and matter in equilibrium. Driving matter out of equilibrium allows for a new class of interactions which are…
It is shown here that fracture after a brief plastic strain, typically of a few percents, is a necessary consequence of the polycrystalline nature of the materials. The polycrystal undergoing plastic deformation is modeled as a flowing…
We describe several unexpected phenomena, caused by a solid-solid phase transition (gel-to-crystal) typical for all main classes of lipid substances - phospholipids, triglycerides, diglycerides, alkanes, etc. We discovered that this…
Organic molecular crystals encompass a vast range of materials from pharmaceuticals to organic optoelectronics and proteins to waxes in biological and industrial settings. Crystal defects from grain boundaries to dislocations are known to…