Related papers: Spontaneous self-wrapping in chiral active polymer…
Chiral nanostructures offer the ability to respond to the vector nature of a light beam at the nanoscale. While naturally chiral materials offer a path towards scalability, engineered structures offer a path to wavelength tunability through…
In condensed matter physics, a broad spectrum of physical characteristics, such as chirality, axiality, and polarity, arises as a direct consequence of the underlying symmetry of the system. We here theoretically investigate the effective…
Polymers with active segments constitute prospective future materials and are used as a model for some biological systems such as chromatin. The directions of the active forces are typically introduced with temporal or spatial correlations…
Moir\'e superstructures arising at twisted 2D interfaces have recently attracted the attention of the scientific community due to exotic quantum states and unique mechanical and tribological behaviors that they exhibit. Here, we predict the…
Colloidal particles in polymer solutions and functionalized nanoparticles often exhibit short-range attraction coupled with long-range repulsion (SALR) leading to the spontaneous formation of symmetric patterns. Chiral nanostructures formed…
Chiral active matter is enjoying a rapid increase of interest, spurred by the rich variety of asymmetries that can be attained in e.g. the shape or self-propulsion mechanism of active particles. Though this has already led to the observance…
Living systems have evolved to efficiently consume available energy sources using an elaborate circuitry of chemical reactions which, puzzlingly, bear a strict restriction to asymmetric chiral configurations. While autocatalysis is known to…
Understanding how nanostructure and nanomechanics influence physical material properties on the micro- and macroscale is an essential goal in soft condensed matter research. Mechanisms governing fragmentation and chirality inversion of…
We analyze the conformational dynamics and statistical properties of an active polymer model. The polymer is described as a freely-jointed bead-rod chain subject to stochastic active force dipoles that act on the suspending solvent where…
Several types of active agents self-propel by spinning around their propulsion axis, thus behaving as active screws. Examples include cytoskeletal filaments in gliding assays, magnetically-driven colloidal helices, and microorganisms like…
The phase structure of a homopolymer chain is investigated in terms of a universal theoretical model, designed to describe the infrared limit of slow spatial variations. The effects of chirality are studied and compared with the influence…
Chirality, or the breaking of mirror symmetry, appears across all scales in nature, from molecular conformations to the dynamics of bacterial collectives. Environments composed of such symmetry-breaking constituents can give rise to…
The chiral nature of active matter plays an important role in the dynamics of active matter interacting with chiral structures. Skyrmions are chiral objects, and their interactions with chiral nanostructures can lead to intriguing…
Shear responsive surfaces offer potential advances in a number of applications. Surface functionalisation using polymer brushes is one route to such properties, particularly in the case of entangled polymers. We report on neutron…
We present a generic framework for modelling three-dimensional deformable shells of active matter that captures the orientational dynamics of the active particles and hydrodynamic interactions on the shell and with the surrounding…
During the early developmental process of organisms, the formation of the left-right laterality requires a subtle mechanism, as it is associated with other principal body axes. Any inherent chiral feature in an egg cell can in principal…
In continuum mechanics, the non-centrosymmetric micropolar theory is usually used to capture the chirality inherent in materials. However when reduced to a two dimensional (2D) isotropic problem, the resulting model becomes non-chiral.…
Self-propelled particles rarely move in straight lines; environmental interactions, shape asymmetry, and intrinsic torques generically induce curved or fluctuating trajectories. In biological and synthetic systems, this curvature often…
Active filaments are a workhorse for propulsion and actuation across biology, soft robotics and mechanical metamaterials. However, artificial active rods suffer from limited robustness and adaptivity because they rely on external control,…
We study a new type of 2D active material that exhibits macroscopic phases with two emergent broken symmetries: self-propelled achiral particles that form dense hexatic clusters, which spontaneously rotate. We experimentally realise active…