Related papers: pH gradient-driven deformation of a crista-like ve…
Hydrostatic pressure is a common perturbation to probe the conformations of proteins. There are two common forms of pressure dependent potentials of mean force (PMFs) derived from hydrophobic molecules available for the coarse grained…
Patterns are quotidian in nature. Distinct multiscale patterns are generally a consequence of nonequilibrium dynamical processes associated with mechanical or hydrodynamic instabilities. In this thesis, I report experimental investigations…
We study the phase behavior of bowl-shaped particles using computer simulations. These particles were found experimentally to form a meta-stable worm-like fluid phase in which the bowl-shaped particles have a strong tendency to stack on top…
Many microorganisms and artificial microswimmers use helical appendages in order to generate locomotion. Though often rotated so as to produce thrust, some species of bacteria such Spiroplasma, Rhodobacter sphaeroides and Spirochetes induce…
We discuss an active phase field crystal (PFC) model that describes a mixture of active and passive particles. First, a microscopic derivation from dynamical density functional theory (DDFT) is presented that includes a systematic treatment…
We present experimental results on the relaxation dynamics of vesicles subjected to a time-dependent elongation flow. We observed and characterized a new instability, which results in the formation of higher order modes of the vesicle shape…
We study the evolution from a liquid to a crystal phase in two-dimensional curved space. At early times, while crystal seeds grow preferentially in regions of low curvature, the lattice frustration produced in regions with high curvature is…
Results are presented from numerical experiments aiming at the computation of stochastic phase-field models for phase transformations by coarse-graining molecular dynamics. The studied phase transformations occur between a solid crystal and…
A cell membrane can be simply regarded as composite material consisting of lipid bilayer, membrane cytoskeleton beneath lipid bilayer, and proteins embedded in lipid bilayer and linked with membrane cytoskeleton if one only concerns its…
The energetically most efficient way how a deformed red blood cell regains equilibrium is mathematically described by the gradient flow of the Canham-Helfrich functional, including a spontaneous curvature and the conservation of surface…
We introduce a Phase Field Crystal (PFC) model for particles with n-fold rotational symmetry in two dimensions. Our approach is based on a free energy functional that depends on the reduced one-particle density, the strength of the…
Water-free NH4V3O8 microcrystals have been successfully synthesized by a microwave-assisted hydrothermal method. The products were characterized by means of X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, Fourier transform infrared…
The shape transformations of fluid membranes induced by curved protein rods are studied using meshless membrane simulations. The rod assembly at low rod density induces a flat membrane tube and oblate vesicle. It is found that the…
Lipid vesicles composed of a mixture of two types of lipids are studied by intensive Monte-Carlo numerical simulations. The coupling between the local composition and the membrane shape is induced by two different spontaneous curvatures of…
The thermodynamical properties of heterogeneous DNA sequences are computed by path integral techniques applied to a nonlinear model Hamiltonian. The base pairs relative displacements are interpreted as time dependent paths whose amplitudes…
Topological defects in active liquid crystals can be confined by introducing gradients of activity. Here, we examine the dynamical behavior of two defects confined by a sharp gradient of activity that separates an active circular region and…
In this work, a new class of vector-valued phase field models is presented, where the values of the phase parameters are constrained by a convex set. The generated phase fields feature the partition of the domain into patches of distinct…
Phase-Field Crystal (PFC) models are able to resolve atomic length scale features of materials during temporal evolution over diffusive time scales. Traditional PFC models contain solid and liquid phases, however many important materials…
The design of vesicles which become unstable at an easily tuned value of pH is of great interest for targeted drug delivery. We present a microscopic theory for two forms of such vesicles. A model of lipids introduced by us previously is…
Within a coupled-field Ginzburg-Landau model we study analytically phase separation and accompanying shape deformation on a two-phase elastic membrane in simple geometries such as cylinders, spheres and tori. Using an exact periodic domain…