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How internal forces are transduced into motion through soft, fluid membranes remains a fundamental question in the study of active systems. To investigate this coupling, we develop a minimal system consisting of a single ferromagnetic…
A theoretical analysis of homeotropic alignment induced by nanoparticles (NPs) in a nematic liquid crystal (NLC) sample cell is presented. It is found that such alignment on the surface of a NP causes a change in the orientation of the…
Depletion forces and macromolecular crowding govern the structure and function of biopolymers in biological cells and the properties of polymer nanocomposite materials. To isolate and analyze the influence of polymer shape fluctuations and…
Lipid bilayers forming biological membranes are known to behave as viscous 2D fluids on submicrometer scales; usually they contain a large number of active protein inclusions. Recently, it has been shown [Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA 112,…
Collective cell migration in 3D extracellular matrix (ECM) is crucial to many physiological and pathological processes. Migrating cells can generate active pulling forces via actin filament contraction, which are transmitted to the ECM…
We investigate the effective interactions between two nanoparticles (or colloids) immersed in a solvent exhibiting two-phase separation. Using a non-local density functional theory, we determine the dependence of the effective potential on…
The integration of the coupling effects of intrinsic wettability and surface charge in a nanochannel can cause non-intuitive behavior in the electrokinetic energy conversion processes. We demonstrate that in a nanofluidic device the energy…
The dynamics of particles interacting by key-lock binding of attached biomolecules are studied theoretically. Examples of such systems include DNA-functionalized colloids as well as nanoparticles grafted with antibodies to cell membrane…
Capture, selective collection and flight manipulation of airborne particulate are three important functional requirements in various actively growing aerosol technology applications. Aerodynamic drag, particle inertia and dielectrophoretic…
We study how adsorption of a near-critical binary mixture in a nanopore is modified by flow inside the pore. We identify three types of steady states upon variation of the pore P\'{e}clet number (${\rm Pe}_p$), which can be reversibly…
We investigate the phase behavior of athermal polymer/nanoparticle blends near a hard substrate. We apply the density functional theory of Tripathi and Chapman to these blends. We find a first order phase transition where the nanoparticles…
Equilibrium self-assembly and conventional materials processing techniques fall far short of mimicking dynamic self-actuating processes that are commonplace throughout biology. To bridge the gap between living and synthetic matter, we study…
Directed growth, anisotropic cell shapes, and confinement drive self-organization in multicellular systems. We investigate the influence of particle shape on the distribution and dynamics of nematic microdomains in a minimal in-silico model…
Mixtures of nanoparticles and polymer-like objects are encountered in many nanotechnological applications and biological systems. We study the behavior of grafted polymer layers decorated by nanoparticles that are attracted to the polymers…
We consider a suspension of polarizable particles under the action of traveling wave dielectrophoresis (DEP) and focus on particle induced effects. In a situation where the particles are driven by the DEP force, but no external forces are…
The dispersal of cells from an initially constrained location is a crucial aspect of many physiological phenomena ranging from morphogenesis to tumour spreading. In such processes, the way cell-cell interactions impact the motion of single…
Biomembranes are thin capacitors with the unique feature of displaying phase transitions in a physiologically relevant regime. We investigate the voltage and lateral pressure dependence of their capacitance close to their chain melting…
To develop a minimal model for a cell moving in a crowded environment such as in tissue, we investigate the response of a liquid drop of active matter moving on a flat rigid substrate to forces applied at its boundaries. We consider two…
Colloidal zinc oxide (ZnO) nanoparticles are frequently used in the field of organic photovoltaics for the realization of solution-producible, electron-selective interfacial layers. Despite of the widespread use, there is a lack of detailed…
Surface tension plays a ubiquitous role in phase transitions including condensation or evaporation of atmospheric liquid droplets. Especially, understanding of interfacial thermodynamics of the critical nucleus of 1 nm scale is important…