Related papers: Complex topologies in phase separated droplets pre…
Living and engineered systems rely on the stable coexistence of two interspersed liquid phases. Yet surface tension drives their complete separation. Here we show that stable droplets of uniform and tuneable size can be produced through…
Phase separation is the thermodynamic process that explains how droplets form in multicomponent fluids. These droplets can provide controlled compartments to localize chemical reactions, and reactions can also affect the droplets' dynamics.…
Phase separation within polymer networks plays a central role in shaping the structure and mechanics of both synthetic materials and living cells, including the formation of biomolecular condensates within cytoskeletal networks. Previous…
Phase separation is a fairly common physical phenomenon with examples including the formation of water droplets from humid air (fog, rain), the separation of a crystalline structure from an isotropic material such as a liquid or even the…
Demixing of multicomponent biomolecular systems via liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS) has emerged as a potentially unifying mechanism governing the formation of several membrane-less intracellular organelles ("condensates"), both in the…
Conventional phase segregation is controlled by a positive interfacial tension, which implies that the system relaxes towards a state in which the interfacial area (or length) is minimized, typically manifesting as a single droplet that…
Hypothesis: Immiscible liquids are commonly used to achieve unique functions in many applications, where the breakup of compound droplets in airflow is an important process. Due to the existence of the liquid-liquid interface, compound…
Fluid mixtures, such as the cellular cytoplasm and synthetic DNA nanostars, can spontaneously compartmentalize into many coexisting phases through liquid-liquid phase separation. Despite the diversity of fluid structures that emerge from…
We study the thermodynamics of binary mixtures with the volume fraction of the minority component less than the amount required to form a flat interface and show that the surface tension dominated equilibrium phase of the mixture forms a…
We propose a continuum theory of the liquid-liquid phase separation in an elastic network where phase-separated microscopic droplets rich in one fluid component can form as an interplay of fluids mixing, droplet nucleation, network…
Pattern formation inside a liquid phase is a phenomenon involved in many different aspects of life on our planet. The droplet form of a liquid that evaporates can reveal patterns that depend on the chemistry of the droplet and the physical…
Spatially uniform electric fields have been used to induce instabilities in liquids and polymers, and to orient and deform ordered phases of block-copolymers. Here we discuss the demixing phase transition occurring in liquid mixtures when…
We study theoretically a model system of a transient network of microemulsion droplets connected by telechelic polymers and explain recent experimental findings. Despite the absence of any specific interactions between either the droplets…
Biological mixtures such as the cytosol may consist of thousands of distinct components. There is now a substantial body of evidence showing that, under physiological conditions, intracellular mixtures can phase separate into spatially…
We study dynamic heterogeneities in a model glass-former whose overlap with a reference configuration is constrained to a fixed value. The system phase-separates into regions of small and large overlap, so that dynamical correlations remain…
Phase separation, crucial for spatially segregating biomolecules in cells, is well-understood in the simple case of a few components with pairwise interactions. Yet, biological cells challenge the simple picture in at least two ways: First,…
Phase separation and transitions among different molecular states are ubiquitous in living cells. Such transitions can be governed by local equilibrium thermodynamics or by active processes controlled by biological fuel. It remains largely…
Inspired by recent experiments, we present a phase-field model of microphase separation in an elastomer swollen with a solvent. The imbalance between the molecular scale of demixing and the mesoscopic scale beyond which elasticity operates…
Phase separation of multicomponent liquid mixtures plays an integral part in many processes ranging from industry to cellular biology. In many cases the morphology of coexisting phases is crucially linked to the function of the separated…
In active systems, whose constituents have non-equilibrium dynamics at local level, fluid-fluid phase separation is widely observed. Examples include the formation of membraneless organelles within cells; the clustering of self-propelled…