Related papers: How Soft is Too Soft? Tuning Order and Disorder in…
When systems that can undergo phase separation between two coexisting phases in the bulk are confined in thin film geometry between parallel walls, the phase behavior can be profoundly modified. These phenomena shall be described and…
The conformational properties of flexible and semiflexible polymers exposed to active noise are studied theoretically. The noise may originate from the interaction of the polymer with surround- ing active (Brownian) particles or from the…
We describe size-varying cylindrical particles made from silicone elastomers that can serve as building blocks for robotic granular materials. The particle size variation, which is achieved by inflation, gives rise to changes in stiffness…
The shape of biological shells, such as cell nuclei, membranes, and vesicles, often deviates from a perfect sphere due to an interplay of complex interactions with a myriad of molecular structures. In particular, semiflexible biopolymers…
We investigate the plasmonic response of single- and bilayer semi-Dirac materials under the influence of a tunable parameter $\delta$ that governs topological transitions via Dirac cone generation/merging and incorporating band inversion…
How do cells tune emergent properties at the scale of tissues? One class of such emergent behaviors are rigidity transitions, in which a tissue changes from a solid-like to a fluid-like state or vice versa. Here, we introduce a new way for…
Anisotropic, submicrometer sized particles are versatile systems providing interesting features in creating ordering in 2-dimensional systems. Combining hard ellipsoids with a soft shell further enhances the opportunities to trigger and…
Topological mechanics can realize soft modes in mechanical metamaterials in which the number of degrees of freedom for particle motion is finely balanced by the constraints provided by interparticle interactions. However, solid objects are…
Polymer chains decorated with a fraction of monomers capable of forming reversible bonds form transient polymer networks that are important in soft and biological systems. If chains are flexible and the attractive monomers are all of the…
Living organisms can demonstrate highly adaptable and sophisticated responses using memory resulting from repeated exposure to external conditions or training. However, realizing similar adaptability in mechanical responses in inanimate,…
Systems in which particles can self-assemble into mono- or bilayers can form variety of stable and metastable structures on a nanometer length scale. For this reason confinement has a particularly strong effect on such systems. We discuss…
We propose a simple phenomenological model for describing the conformational dynamics of biopolymers via the nonlinearity-induced buckling and collapse (i.e. coiling up) instabilities. Taking into account the coupling between the internal…
Liquid crystals can self-organize into a layered smectic phase. While the smectic layers are typically straight forming a lamellar pattern in bulk, external confinement may drastically distort the layers due to the boundary conditions…
The impact of confinement on self-assembly of particles interacting with short-range attraction and long-range repulsion (SALR) potential is studied for thermodynamic states corresponding to local ordering of clusters or layers in the bulk.…
Elastic properties of soft, three-dimensional dimers, interacting through site-site n-inverse-power potential, are determined by computer simulations at zero temperature. The degenerate crystal of dimers exhibiting (Gaussian) size…
Soft materials consist of basic units that are significantly larger than an atom but much smaller than the overall dimensions of the sample. The label "soft condensed matter" emphasizes that the large basic building blocks of these…
Deformable colloids and macromolecules adsorb at interfaces, as they decrease the interfacial energy between the two media. The deformability, or softness, of these particles plays a pivotal role in the properties of the interface. In this…
Semiflexible polymers are widely used as a paradigm for understanding structural phases in biomolecules including folding of proteins. Here, we compare bead-spring and bead-stick variants of coarse-grained semiflexible polymer models that…
The transition between gapped (semiconducting) and gapless (metallic) phases and tunability of bandgap in materials is a very lucrative yet considerably challenging goal for new-age device preparation. For bulk materials and for…
Understanding the role of disorder and the correlations that exist within it, is one of the defining challenges in contemporary materials science. However, there are few material systems, devoid of other complex interactions, which can be…