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Cells and tissues exert forces and can actively change shape. This strikingly autonomous behavior is powered by the cytoskeleton, which includes an active gel of actin filaments, crosslinks, and myosin molecular motors. Although individual…
A transition from solid-like to liquid-like behavior occurs when colloidal gels are subjected to a prolonged exposure to a steady shear. This phenomenon, which is characterized by a yielding point, is found to be strongly dependent on the…
Molecular-motor generated active stresses drive the cytoskeleton away from equilibrium, endowing it with tunable mechanical properties that are essential for diverse functions such as cell division and motility[1-5]. Designing analogous…
Using mesoscopic numerical simulations and analytical theory we investigate the coarsening of the solvent structure around a colloidal particle emerging after a temperature quench of the colloid surface. Qualitative differences in the…
Spinodal demixing of systems into two phases having very different viscosities leads to viscoelastic networks, i.e. gels. Here we consider demixing in a colloidal system where one phase is a nematic liquid crystal with a strongly…
We examine microstructural and mechanical changes which occur during oscillatory shear flow and reformation after flow cessation of an intermediate volume fraction colloidal gel using rheometry and Brownian Dynamics (BD) simulations. A…
We use molecular dynamics computer simulations to investigate the relaxation dynamics of a simple model for a colloidal gel at a low volume fraction. We find that due to the presence of the open spanning network this dynamics shows at low…
The design of photo-active collagen systems is presented as a basis for establishing biomimetic materials with varied network architecture and programmable macroscopic properties. Following in-house isolation of type I collagen, reaction…
We study a microscopically realistic model of a physical gel and use computer simulations to investigate its static and dynamic properties at thermal equilibrium. The phase diagram comprises a sol phase, a coexistence region ending at a…
We present a confocal-microscopy study of demixing and remixing in binary liquids containing colloidal particles. First, particle-stabilized emulsions have been fabricated by nucleation and growth of droplets upon cooling from the…
Active colloidal systems have emerged as promising contenders for the future of microdevices. While conventional designs have extensively exploited the use of hard colloids, the advancement of cell-inspired architectures represents a…
Artificial soft matter systems have appeared as important tools to harness mechanical motion for microscale manipulation. Typically, this motion is driven either by the external fields or by mutual interaction between the colloids. In the…
We present experiments and simulations on cyclically sheared colloidal gels, and probe their behaviour on several different length scales. The shearing induces structural changes in the experimental gel, changing particles' neighborhoods…
Attractive colloidal gels display a solid-to-fluid transition as shear stresses above the yield stress are applied. This shear-induced transition is involved in virtually any application of colloidal gels. It is also crucial for controlling…
Colloidal gel aging is investigated using very long runs of brownian dynamics simulations. The Asakura Oosawa description of the depletion interaction is used to model a simple colloid polymer mixture. Several regimes are identified during…
Polymer gels with photo-responsive cross-links enable tunable mechanics and surface morphologies, making them promising for adaptive materials. While prior work on coumarin cross-linked gels has focused on photo-mediated events in dilute…
Substitutional doping with transition metals is carried out in the Lepidocrocite phase - the stable monolayer geometry of TiO$_2$, using density functional theory (DFT) methods. The doping is carried out at the differently coordinated O…
The internal dynamics of active gels, both in artificial (in-vitro) model systems and inside the cytoskeleton of living cells, has been extensively studied by experiments of recent years. These dynamics are probed using tracer particles…
We study the dynamics of quasi-two-dimensional concentrated suspensions of colloidal particles in active gels by computer simulations. Remarkably, we find that activity induces a dynamic clustering of colloids even in the absence of any…
We report a computer simulation study of a model gel-former obtained by modifying the three-body interactions of the Stillinger-Weber potential for silicon. This modification reduces the average coordination number and consequently shifts…