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A variety of complex fluids consist in soft, round objects (foams, emulsions, assemblies of copolymer micelles or of multilamellar vesicles -- also known as onions). Their dense packing induces a slight deviation from their prefered…
In the quest to increase battery performance, nanostructuring battery electrodes gives access to architectures with electrical conductivity and solid-state diffusion regimes not accessible with traditional electrodes based on aggregated…
Materials that are strong, ultra-light weight and tough are in demand for a range of applications, requiring architectures and components carefully designed from the micrometer down to nanometer scales. Nacre-a structure found in many…
Bioconvection, a phenomenon arising from the collective motion of motile microorganisms, plays a crucial role in shaping microbial distributions, fluid dynamics, and bloom formation in aquatic environments. While extensive research has…
Biological tissues exhibit complex behaviors with their dynamics often resembling inert soft matter such as liquids, polymers, colloids, and liquid crystals. These analogies enable physics-based approaches for investigations of emergent…
From multicellular tissues to bacterial colonies, three dimensional cellular structures arise through the interaction of cellular activities and mechanical forces. Simple bacterial communities provide model systems for analyzing such…
Many active systems are capable of forming intriguing patterns at scales significantly larger than the size of their individual constituents. Cyanobacteria are one of the most ancient and important phyla of organisms that has allowed the…
The study of the interactions of living adherent cells with mechanically stable (visco)elastic materials enables understanding and exploiting physiological phenomena mediated by cell-extracellular communication. However, insight on the…
Microbial ecosystems are remarkably diverse, stable, and often consist of a balanced mixture of core and peripheral species. Here we propose a conceptual model exhibiting all these emergent properties in quantitative agreement with real…
The cytoskeleton is a model active matter system that controls diverse cellular processes from division to motility. While both active actomyosin dynamics and actin-microtubule interactions are key to the cytoskeleton's versatility and…
Cyanobacteria sequester photosynthetic enzymes into microcompartments which facilitate the conversion of carbon dioxide into sugars. Geometric similarities between these structures and self-assembling viral capsids have inspired models that…
Inspired by the cellular design of plant tissue, we present a new approach to make versatile, tough, highly water-swelling composites. We embed highly swelling hydrogel particles inside tough, water-permeable, elastomeric matrices. The…
Inspired by adhesive bio-filamentous structure, such as bacterial pili, this work details the methods used to fabricate and characterize a surface-anchored array of thin, flexible and shape-responsive mesoscale polymer ribbons with a…
Technologically useful and robust graphene-based interfaces for devices require the introduction of highly selective, stable, and covalently bonded functionalities on the graphene surface, whilst essentially retaining the electronic…
Motility coupled to responsive behavior is essential for many microorganisms to seek and establish appropriate habitats. One of the simplest possible responses, reversing the direction of motion, is believed to enable filamentous…
Magnesium and its alloys are intriguing as possible biodegradable biomaterials due to their unique combination of biodegradability and high specific mechanical properties. However, uncontrolled biodegradation of magnesium during…
Filamentous cyanobacteria are one of the oldest and today still most abundant lifeforms on earth, with manifold implications in ecology and economics. Their flexible filaments, often several hundred cells long, exhibit gliding motility in…
Bradyrhizobium diazoefficiens is a nitrogen-fixing symbiont of soybean, worldwide used as biofertilizer. This soil bacterium possesses two flagellar systems enabling it to swim in water-saturated soils. However, the motility in soil pores,…
Soft materials with a liquid component are an emerging paradigm in materials design. The incorporation of a liquid phase, such as water, liquid metals, or complex fluids, into solid materials imparts unique properties and characteristics…
Brittle materials fail catastrophically. In consequence of their limited flaw-tolerance, failure occurs by localized fracture and is typically a dynamic process. Recently, experiments on epithelial cell monolayers have revealed that this…