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We report extensive numerical simulations of different models of 2D polymer rings with internal elasticity. We monitor the dynamical behavior of the rings as a function of the packing fraction, to address the effects of particle deformation…
Nanoscale molecular transport plays a crucial role in regulating mass diffusion and responsiveness in condensed matter systems. In soft porous crystals, in particular, adsorption of guest molecules induces host framework deformation and…
A recent study has demonstrated that phase separation in binary liquid mixtures is arrested in the presence of elastic networks and can lead to a nearly uniformly-sized distribution of the dilute-phase droplets. At longer timescales, these…
A polymer network can imbibe water, forming an aggregate called hydrogel, and undergo large and inhomogeneous deformation with external mechanical constraint. Due to the large deformation, nonlinearity plays a crucial role, which also…
Thermoresponsive microgels find widespread use as colloidal model systems, because their temperature-dependent size allows facile tuning of their volume fraction "in situ". However, an interaction potential unifying their behavior across…
We develop a general method for determining the effective interaction potential between two or more droplets suspended within a fluid phase. Our approach is based on classical density functional theory. Here, we apply the method to…
Extensions to kinetic theory and hydrodynamic models are proposed that account for the existence of multi-particle contacts. In the presence of multi-particle contacts (involving elastic, reversible, potential contact energy), dissipation…
Excitons in semiconductors can form a variety of collective states leading to different regimes of exciton propagation. Here we theoretically demonstrate the possibility to reach the viscous hydrodynamic -- liquid-like -- regime of exciton…
Macroscopic elastic core-shell systems can be generated as toy models to be deformed and haptically studied by hand. On the mesoscale, colloidal core-shell particles and microgels are fabricated and investigated by different types of…
An important open problem in materials science is whether a direct connection exists between single-particle elastic properties and the macroscopic bulk behavior. Here we address this question by focusing on the archetype of soft colloids:…
Responsive particles, such as biomacromolecules or hydrogels, display a broad and polymodal distribution of conformations and have thus the ability to change their properties (e.g, size, shape, charge density, etc.) substantially in…
We propose a novel framework for the spontaneous motion of a droplet coupled with internal dynamic patterns generated in a reaction-diffusion system. The spatio-temporal order of the chemical reaction gives rise to inhomogeneous surface…
The contact of a hydrogel during the rotational shearing on glass surface in concentrated polymer solution was observed in situ. Dynamic contact patterns that rotate in-phase with the rotational shearing of the gel were observed for the…
Many types of mammalian cells exert active contractile forces and mechanically deform their elastic substrate, to accomplish biological functions such as cell migration. These substrate deformations provide a mechanism by which cells can…
We report on rate-dependent fracture energy measurements over three decades of steady crack velocities in alginate and gelatin hydrogels. We evidence that, irrespective of gel thermo-reversibility, thermally activated "unzipping" of the…
Collective oscillation of cells in a population has been reported under diverse biological contexts and with vastly different molecular constructs. Could there be common principles similar to those that govern spontaneous oscillation in…
We review continuum elastic models for the transmission of both external forces and internal active cellular forces in biopolymer gels, and relate them to recent experiments. Rather than being exhaustive, we focus on continuum elastic…
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…
Stress relaxation following deformation of an entangled polymeric liquid is thought to be affected by transient reforming of chain entanglements. In this work, we use single molecule techniques to study the relaxation of individual polymers…
Polyelectrolyte gels are a very attractive class of actuation materials with remarkable electronic and mechanical properties with a great similarity to biological contractile tissues. They consist of a polymer network with ionizable groups…