Related papers: Generating forces in confinement via polymerizatio…

In the self-assembly process which drives the formation of cellular membranes, micelles, and capsids, a collection of separated subunits spontaneously binds together to form functional and more ordered structures. In this work, we study the…

We study spontaneous deformations of a ribbon made of nematic polymer networks and activated under the action of a mechanical load. We show that when such ribbons are activated appropriately, the deformations produced can pull back and…

Recently there has been an increase in demand for soft and biocompatible electronic devices capable of withstanding large stretch. Ionically conductive polymers present a promising class of soft materials for these emerging applications due…

Shape morphing magnetic soft materials, composed of magnetic particles in a soft polymer matrix, can transform shapes reversibly, remotely, and rapidly, finding diverse applications in actuators, soft robotics, and biomedical devices. To…

We present Monte Carlo computer simulations for melts of semiflexible randomly knotted and randomly concatenated ring polymers on the fcc lattice and in slit confinement. Through systematic variation of the slit width at fixed melt density,…

Soft living tissues like cartilage can be considered as biphasic materials comprised of a fibrous complex biopolymer network and a viscous background liquid. Here, we show by a combination of experiment and theoretical analysis that both…

An elastic membrane that is forced to reside in a container smaller than its natural size will deform and, upon further volume reduction, eventually crumple. The crumpled state is characterized by the localization of energy in a complex…

Curvature in biological membranes can be generated by a variety of different molecular mechanisms such as protein scaffolding, lipid or protein asymmetry, cytoskeletal forces, etc. These mechanisms have the net effect of generating stresses…

A predicting model for soft Dielectric Elastomer Generators (DEGs) must consider a realistic model of the electromechanical behaviour of the elastomer filling, the variable capacitor and of the electrical circuit connecting all elements of…

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…

We create mechanical metamaterials whose response to uniaxial compression can be programmed by lateral confinement, allowing monotonic, non-monotonic and hysteretic behavior. These functionalities arise from a broken rotational symmetry…

Cell walls define a cell shape in bacteria. They are rigid to resist large internal pressures, but remarkably plastic to adapt to a wide range of external forces and geometric constraints. Currently, it is unknown how bacteria maintain…

We elucidate the molecular forces leading to assembly of two dimensional membrane-like structures composed of a one rod-length thick monolayer of aligned rods from an immiscible suspension of hard rods and depleting polymers. We perform…

We consider a fully directed self-avoiding walk model on a cubic lattice to mimic the conformations of an infinitely long confined flexible polymer chain; and the confinement condition is achieved by two parallel athermal plates. The…

The concept of creating all-mechanical soft microrobotic systems has great potential to address outstanding challenges in biomedical applications, and introduce more sustainable and multifunctional products. To this end, magnetic fields and…

We simulate a two dimensional model of self-propelled particles confined by a deformable boundary. The particles tend to accumulate near the boundary and the shape of the boundary deforms upon the collisions. We find that there are two…

By means of Langevin dynamics simulations, we investigate the gel formation of randomly functionalized polymers in solution, with the ability to form both intra- and intermolecular reversible bonds. Under highly dilute conditions, these…

Letting free polymers diffuse from solution into a crosslinked polymer gel is often a crucial processing step in the synthesis of multiphase polymer-based gels, e.g., core-shell microgels. Here we use coarse-grained molecular dynamics…

Because final properties of nanoscale polymeric structures are largely determined by the solid-state microstructure of the confined polymer, it is imperative not only to understand how the microstructure of polymers develops under nanoscale…

The presence of membrane tubules in living cells is essential to many biological processes. In cells, one mechanism to form nanosized lipid tubules is via molecular motor induced bilayer extraction. In this paper, we describe a simple…