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The technological and economic benefits of engineered nanomaterials may be offset by their adverse effects on living organisms. One of the highly produced nanomaterials under such scrutiny is amorphous silica nanoparticles, which are known…
Molecule-based devices are envisioned to complement silicon devices by providing new functions or already existing functions at a simpler process level and at a lower cost by virtue of their self-organization capabilities. Moreover, they…
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…
The fabrication of versatile building blocks that are reliably self-assemble into desired ordered and disordered phases is amongst the hottest topics in contemporary material science. To this end, microscopic units of varying complexity,…
We systematically explore the self-assembly of semi-flexible polymers in deformable spherical confinement across a wide regime of chain stiffness, contour lengths and packing fractions by means of coarse-grained molecular dynamics…
Understanding protein self-assembly is important for many biological and industrial processes. Proteins can self-assemble into crystals, filaments, gels, and other amorphous aggregates. The final forms include virus capsids and condensed…
Mechanosensory ciliary bundles in fishes are the inspiration for carefully engineered artificial flow sensors. We report the development of a new class of ultrasensitive MEMS flow sensors that mimic the intricate morphology of the ciliary…
Spider monkeys (genus Ateles) have a prehensile tail that functions as a flexible, multipurpose fifth limb, enabling them to navigate complex terrains, grasp objects of various sizes, and swing between supports. Inspired by the spider…
Future nano-scale electronics built up from an Avogadro number of components needs efficient, highly scalable, and robust means of communication in order to be competitive with traditional silicon approaches. In recent years, the…
The self-assembly of particles into organized structures is a key feature of living organisms and a major engineering challenge. While it may proceed through the binding of perfectly matched, puzzle-pieces-like particles, many other…
Unlike hard materials such as metals and ceramics, rubbery materials can endure large deformations due to the large conformational degree of freedom of the crosslinked three-dimensional polymer network. However, the effect of the branching…
Protein fibril accumulation at interfaces is an important step in many physiological processes and neurodegenerative diseases as well as in designing materials. Here we show, using $\beta$-lactoglobulin fibrils as a model, that semiflexible…
Intriguing physical phenomena observed in natural materials have inspired the development of several engineering materials with dramatically improved performance. Marine sponge glass fibers, for instance, have attracted interest in recent…
The mechanical properties of non-vulcanized natural rubber and dialyzed natural rubber-clay nanocomposites have been studied by uniaxial deformations to evaluate the reinforcement efficiency of the clay. We show that while non-rubber…
Proteins can combine into functional elements in living cells or self-assemble into unwanted structures in a number of diseases. The resulting aggregates often display filamentous morphologies across a large range of protein shapes and…
Peptides are recognized for their varied self-assembly behaviors, forming a wide array of structures and geometries, such as spheres, fibers, and hydrogels, each presenting a unique set of material properties. The functionalities of these…
At the cutting edge of materials science, matter is designed to self-organize into structures that perform a wide range of functions. The past two decades have witnessed major innovations in the versatility of building blocks, ranging from…
Precise control of particle positioning is desirable in many optical propulsion and sorting applications. Here, we develop an integrated platform for particle manipulation consisting of a combined optical nanofiber and optical tweezers…
Rheological properties of a material often require to be probed under extensional deformation. Examples include fibrous materials such as spider-silk, high-molecular weight polymer melts, and the contractile response of living cells. Such…
Here, we provide an overview of theoretical approaches to semiflexible polymers and their networks. Such semiflexible polymers have large bending rigidities that can compete with the entropic tendency of a chain to crumple up into a random…