Related papers: Power Law Rheology of Folded Protein Hydrogels
Power law rheology is of widespread occurrence in complex materials that are characterized by the presence of a very broad range of microstructural length and time scales. Although phenomenological models able to reproduce the observed…
It is established that the mechanical properties of hydrogels control the fate of (stem) cells. However, despite its importance, a one-to-one correspondence between gels' stiffness and cell behaviour is still missing from literature. In…
Thermosensitive microgels are widely studied hybrid systems combining properties of polymers and colloidal particles in a unique way. Due to their complex morphology their interactions and packing, and consequentially the viscoelastcity of…
A reduced model, which can fold both helix and sheet structures, is proposed to study the problem of protein folding. The goal of this model is to find an unbiased effective potential that has included the effects of water and at the same…
Hydrogels are increasingly recognized as a versatile platform for applications spanning from tissue engineering to soft robotics or flexible electronics. Recent efforts have focused on enhancing and tailoring their mechanical performance to…
Stressed soft materials commonly present viscoelastic signatures in the form of power-law or exponential decay. Understanding the origins of such rheologic behaviors is crucial to find proper technological applications. Using an elastic…
Biological hydrogels have been increasingly sought after as e.g. wound dressings or scaffolds for regenerative medicine, due to their inherent biofunctionality in biological environments. Especially in moist wound healing, the ideal…
Relations between static and dynamic viscoelastic responses in gels can be very elucidating and may provide useful tools to study the behavior of bio-materials such as protein hydrogels. An important example comes from the viscoelasticity…
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…
Protein-stabilised emulsion gels can be studied in the theoretical framework of colloidal gels, because both protein assemblies and droplets may be considered as soft colloids. These particles differ in their nature, size and softness, and…
Polymer gels behave as soft viscoelastic solids and exhibit a generic nonlinear mechanical response characterized by pronounced stiffening prior to irreversible failure, most often through macroscopic fractures. Here, we aim at capturing…
Hydrogels are biphasic, swollen polymer networks where elastic deformation is coupled to nanoscale fluid flow. As a consequence, hydrogels can withstand large strains and exhibit nonlinear, hyperelastic properties. For low-modulus hydrogel…
Fibre-reinforced hydrogels are promising materials for biomedical applications due to their strength, toughness, and tunability. However, it remains unclear how to design fibre-reinforced hydrogels for use in specific applications due to…
We model the cytoskeleton as a fractal network by identifying each segment with a simple Kelvin-Voigt element, with a well defined equilibrium length. The final structure retains the elastic characteristics of a solid or a gel, which may…
Biomaterials such as protein or polysaccharide gels are known to behave qualitatively as soft solids and to rupture under an external load. Combining optical and ultrasonic imaging to shear rheology we show that the failure scenario of a…
From pasta to biological tissues to contact lenses, gel and gel-like materials inherently soften as they swell with water. In dry, low-relative-humidity environments, these materials stiffen as they de-swell with water. Here, we use…
Polydispersity is a universal feature of synthetic polymers and biological molecules in the cytoplasm. However, its quantitative impact on collective behavior remains poorly understood because conventional metrics, such as the…
Soft materials often exhibit a distinctive power-law viscoelastic response arising from broad distribution of time-scales present in their complex internal structure. A promising tool to accurately describe the rheological behaviour of soft…
Understanding protein folding has been one of the great challenges in biochemistry and molecular biophysics. Over the past 50 years, many thermodynamic and kinetic studies have been performed addressing the stability of globular proteins.…
We show that the slow viscoelastic response of a foam is that of a power-law fluid with a terminal relaxation. Investigations of the foam mechanics in creep and recovery tests reveal that the power-law contribution is fully reversible,…