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Softer means stickier for solid adhesives, because material compliance facilitates close contact between non-conformal surfaces. Recent discoveries have revealed that soft materials can exhibit a rich array of new physics arising from…
A model of lipid bilayers made of a mixture of two lipids with different average compositions on both leaflets, is developed. A Landau hamiltonian describing the lipid-lipid interactions on each leaflet, with two lipidic fields $\psi_1$ and…
Short DNA linkers are increasingly being exploited for driving specific self-assembly of Brownian objects. DNA-functionalised colloids can assemble into ordered or amorphous materials with tailored morphology. Recently, the same approach…
The use of colloidal supported lipid bilayers (CSLBs) has recently been extended to create colloidal joints, that - in analogy to their macroscopic counterparts - can flexibly connect colloidal particles. These novel elements enable the…
Motivated by recent experiments showing nonlinear elasticity of in vitro networks of the biopolymer actin cross-linked with filamin, we present an effective medium theory of flexibly cross-linked stiff polymer networks. We model such…
We study equilibrium shapes and shape transformations of a confined semiflexible chain inside a soft lipid tubule using simulations and continuum theories. The deformed tubular shapes and chain conformations depend on the relative magnitude…
Large scale models of physical phenomena demand the development of new statistical and computational tools in order to be effective. Many such models are `sloppy', i.e., exhibit behavior controlled by a relatively small number of parameter…
Geometric graph models of systems as diverse as proteins, robots, and mechanical structures from DNA assemblies to architected materials point towards a unified way to represent and control them in space and time. While much work has been…
Soft materials, such as colloidal suspensions, polymer solutions, and biological systems, are typically multicomponent mixtures of macromolecules and simpler components (e.g., microions, monomers, solvent) that can assemble into complex…
We employ molecular dynamics simulations to explore how internal flexibility affects phase transitions in soft-matter systems composed of dimers interacting via a core-softened potential with two characteristic length scales. Monomers are…
Microgels are soft colloids that, in virtue of their polymeric nature, can react to external stimuli such as temperature or pH by changing their size. The resulting swelling/deswelling transition can be exploited in fundamental research as…
We study, using dissipative particle dynamics simulations, the effect of active lipid flip-flop on model fluid bilayer membranes. We consider both cases of symmetric as well as asymmetric flip-flops. Symmetric flip-flop leads to a steady…
An important open problem in materials science is whether a direct connection exists between single-particle elastic properties and the macroscopic bulk behavior. Here we address this question by focusing on the archetype of soft colloids:…
The elasticity of disordered and polydisperse polymer networks is a fundamental problem of soft matter physics that is still open. Here, we self-assemble polymer networks via simulations of a mixture of bivalent and tri- or tetravalent…
The possibility of prescribing local interactions between nano- and microscopic components that direct them to assemble in a predictable fashion is a central goal of nanotechnology research. In this article we advance a new paradigm in…
A minimalist simulation model for lipid bilayers is presented. Each lipid is represented by a flexible chain of beads in implicit solvent. The hydrophobic effect is mimicked through an intermolecular pair potential localized at the…
Entangled spin squeezed states generated via dipolar interactions in lattice models provide unique opportunities for quantum enhanced sensing and are now within reach of current experiments. A critical question in this context is which…
Soft composite solids, comprising discrete inclusions embedded within a compliant matrix, are emerging candidates for engineering synthetic tissues and soft robotic materials. Current strategies for controlling their nonlinear mechanics,…
The role of fixed degrees of freedom in soft/granular matter systems has broad applicability and theoretical interest. Here we address questions of the geometrical role that a scaffolding of fixed particles plays in tuning the threshold…
We examine the dynamics of two-dimensional colloidal systems using numerical simulations of a system with a drive applied to a thin region in the middle of the sample to produce a local shear. For a monodisperse colloidal assembly, we find…