Related papers: Decoupling dynamics and crosslink stability in sup…
Hydrogels are increasingly recognized as a versatile platform for applications spanning from tissue engineering to soft robotics or flexible electronics. Recent efforts have focused on enhancing and tailoring their mechanical performance to…
The liquid-liquid phase separation of biomolecules is an important process for intracellular organization. Biomolecular sequence combinatorics leads to a large variety of proteins and nucleic acids which can interact to form a diversity of…
The thermodynamics and dynamics of supercooled liquids correlate with their elasticity. In particular for covalent networks, the jump of specific heat is small and the liquid is {\it strong} near the threshold valence where the network…
Microgels are elastic and deformable particles with a hybrid nature between that of polymers and colloids and unconventional behaviours with respect to hard colloids. We investigated the dynamics of a soft microgel made of interpenetrated…
In analogy with classic rigidity problems of networks and frames, the elastic properties of hydrogels made of DNA nanostars (DNAns) are expected to strongly depend on the precise geometry of their building blocks. However, it is currently…
The rapid worldwide spread of severe viral infections, often involving novel modifications of viruses, poses major challenges to our health care systems. This means that tools that can efficiently and specifically diagnose viruses are much…
Colloidal gel networks are disordered elastic solids that can form even in extremely dilute particle suspensions. With interaction strengths comparable to the thermal energy, their stress-bearing network can locally restructure via breaking…
This paper aims at a comprehensive understanding on the novel elastic property of double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) discovered very recently through single-molecule manipulation techniques. A general elastic model for double-stranded biopolymers…
Homologous gene shuffling between DNA promotes genetic diversity and is an important pathway for DNA repair. For this to occur, homologous genes need to find and recognize each other. However, despite its central role in homologous…
Additive fabrication of biocompatible 3D structures out of liquid hydrogel solutions has become pivotal technology for tissue engineering, soft robotics, biosensing, drug delivery, etc. Electron and X-ray lithography are well suited to…
Supercrystalline nanocomposites (SCNCs) are nanostructured hybrid materials with unique emergent functional properties. Given their periodically arranged building blocks, they also offer interesting parallelisms with crystalline materials.…
We present an interpolated kinetically constrained lattice gas model which exhibits a transition from fragile to strong supercooled liquid behavior. We find non-monotonic decoupling that is due to this crossover and is seen in experiment.
Entangled networks are ubiquitous in tissues, polymers, and fabrics. However, their mechanics remain insufficiently understood due to the complexity of the topological constraints at the network level. Here, we develop a mathematical…
We present a generic formulation of the continuum elasticity of an isotropic crosslinked active gel. The gel is described by a two-component model consisting of an elastic network coupled frictionally to a permeating fluid. Activity is…
The thermodynamical stability of DNA minicircles is investigated by means of path integral techniques. Hydrogen bonds between base pairs on complementary strands can be broken by thermal fluctuations and temporary fluctuational openings…
The existence of heterogeneity in the dynamics of supercooled liquids is believed to be one of the hallmarks of the glass transition. Intense research has been carried out in the past to understand the origin of this heterogeneity in…
We employ small-angle X-ray and dynamic light scattering to investigate the microscopic structure and dynamics of dense suspensions of ultra-low crosslinked (ULC) poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAM) microgels. By probing the supercooled…
DNA is increasingly employed for bio and nanotechnology thanks to its exquisite versatility and designability. Most of its use is limited to linearised and torsionally relaxed DNA but non-trivial architectures and torsionally constrained --…
Phase separation has recently emerged as an important organizational principle in the dense and heterogeneous environment within living cells. Here, we use a synthetic system to show that compressive stresses in a polymer network suppress…
Vitrimers are a relatively new class of polymeric materials containing associative covalent dynamic bonds that make them recyclable by design. However, the fundamental mechanisms controlling their viscoelastic properties remain poorly…