Related papers: Nucleation of chemically active droplets
Droplets are essential for spatially controlling biomolecules in cells. To work properly, cells need to control the emergence and morphology of droplets. On the one hand, driven chemical reactions can affect droplets profoundly. For…
Biomolecular condensates are small droplets forming spontaneously in biological cells via phase separation. They play a role in many cellular processes, but it is unclear how cells control them. Cellular regulation often relies on…
Biological cells and synthetic analogues use liquid-liquid phase separation to dynamically compartmentalize their environment for various applications. In many cases, multiple droplets need to coexist, and their size needs to be controlled,…
Droplet formation has emerged as an essential concept for the spatiotemporal organisation of biomolecules in cells. However, classical descriptions of droplet dynamics based on passive liquid-liquid phase separation cannot capture the…
Biomolecular condensates play a crucial role in the spatial organization of living matter. These membrane-less organelles, resulting from liquid-liquid phase separation, operate far from thermodynamic equilibrium, with their size and…
Droplets form a cornerstone of the spatiotemporal organization of biomolecules in cells. These droplets are controlled using physical processes like chemical reactions and imposed gradients, which are costly to simulate using traditional…
Over recent years, molecular simulations have provided invaluable insights into the microscopic processes governing the initial stages of crystal nucleation and growth. A key aspect that has been observed in many different systems is the…
Phase separation is the thermodynamic process that explains how droplets form in multicomponent fluids. These droplets can provide controlled compartments to localize chemical reactions, and reactions can also affect the droplets' dynamics.…
Full nucleation control for deposited functional molecules on pre-patterned surfaces is of major technological relevance. To understand the nucleation behavior we combine the numerical solution for the evolution of the adatom concentration…
Biological cells use droplets to separate components and spatially control their interior. Experiments demonstrate that the complex, crowded cellular environment affects the droplet arrangement and their sizes. To understand this behavior,…
Biomolecular condensates are essential for cellular organization and result from phase separation in systems far from thermodynamic equilibrium. Among various models, chemically active droplets play a significant role, consisting of…
We consider the liquid drop model for nuclei interacting with a neutralizing homogeneous background of electrons. The regime we are interested in is when the fraction between the electronic and the nuclear charge density is small. We show…
Chemically active droplets provide simple models for cell-like systems that can grow and divide. Such active droplet systems are driven away from thermodynamic equilibrium and turn over chemically, which corresponds to a simple metabolism.…
Biomolecular condensates play a central role in the spatial organization of living matter. Their formation is now well understood as a form of liquid-liquid phase separation that occurs very far from equilibrium. For instance, they can be…
Biomolecular condensates are complex droplets comprising diverse molecules that interact using various mechanisms. Condensation is often driven by short-ranged attraction, but net charges can also mediate long-ranged repulsion. Using…
Phase-separated liquid condensates can spatially organize and thereby regulate chemical processes. However, the physicochemical mechanisms underlying such regulation remain elusive as the intramolecular interactions responsible for phase…
Heterogeneous nucleation is studied by Monte Carlo simulations and phenomenological theory, using the two-dimensional lattice gas model with suitable boundary fields. A chemical inhomogeneity of length b at one boundary favors the liquid…
Unlike fluids at thermal equilibrium, biomolecular mixtures in living systems can sustain nonequilibrium steady states, in which active processes modify the conformational states of the constituent molecules. Despite qualitative…
Chemically driven fluids can demix to form condensed droplets that exhibit phase behaviors not observed at equilibrium. In particular, nonequilibrium interfacial properties can emerge when the chemical reactions are driven differentially…
These lecture notes describe a basic theory of chemically active droplets, which are droplets kept away from equilibrium by driven chemical reactions. The notes assume a basic familiarity with equilibrium thermodynamics of phase separation,…