Related papers: Chemically Active Liquid Bridges Generate Repulsiv…
Controlling interfaces of phase separating fluid mixtures is key to creating diverse functional soft materials. Traditionally, this is accomplished with surface-modifying chemical agents. Using experiment and theory, we study how mechanical…
Droplets are essential for spatially controlling biomolecules in cells. To work properly, cells need to control the emergence and morphology of droplets. On the one hand, driven chemical reactions can affect droplets profoundly. For…
Interactions among biologically active agents is facilitated by their self-generated chemical and hydrodynamic fields. In order to elucidate the pair-wise interactions between such micro-organisms, we employ active droplets as a model…
Biological tissues exhibit complex behaviors with their dynamics often resembling inert soft matter such as liquids, polymers, colloids, and liquid crystals. These analogies enable physics-based approaches for investigations of emergent…
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.…
Wetting of liquid droplets on passive surfaces is ubiquitous in our daily lives, and the governing physical laws are well-understood. When surfaces become active, however, the governing laws of wetting remain elusive. Here we propose…
We numerically study two-component capillary bridges formed when a liquid droplet is placed in between two liquid infused surfaces (LIS). In contrast to commonly studied one-component capillary bridges on non-infused solid surfaces,…
Liquid-liquid-solid systems are becoming increasingly common in everyday life with many possible applications. Here, we focus on a special case of such liquid-liquid-solid systems, namely, capillary suspensions. These capillary suspensions…
Droplets form a cornerstone of the spatiotemporal organization of biomolecules in cells. These droplets are controlled using physical processes like chemical reactions and imposed gradients, which are costly to simulate using traditional…
Phase separating systems that are maintained away from thermodynamic equilibrium via molecular processes represent a class of active systems, which we call active emulsions. These systems are driven by external energy input for example…
The field of active matter, and particularly active emulsions, is growing rapidly, with significant progress made recently on both theoretical and experimental fronts. Here, we summarize experimental research progress related to active…
These lecture notes describe a basic theory of chemically active droplets, which are droplets kept away from equilibrium by driven chemical reactions. The notes assume a basic familiarity with equilibrium thermodynamics of phase separation,…
Controlling fluidic flows in active droplets is crucial in developing intelligent models to understand and mimic single-celled microorganisms. Typically, these fluidic flows are affected by the interfacial dynamics of chemical agents. We…
Molecular dynamics simulations have been performed on pure liquid water, aqueous solutions of sodium chloride, and polymer solutions exposed to a strong external electric field with the goal to gain molecular insight into the structural…
We studied experimentally the breakup of liquid bridges made of aqueous solutions of Poly(acrylic acid) between two separating solid surfaces with freely moving contact lines. For polymer concentrations higher than a certain threshold…
Liquid capillary-bridge formation between solid particles has a critical influence on the rheological properties of granular materials and, in particular, on the efficiency of fluidized bed reactors. The available analytical and…
Droplets are the core functional units in microfluidic technologies that aim to integrate computation and reaction on a single platform. Achieving directed transport and control of these droplets typically demands elaborate substrate…
It has been proposed that during the early steps in the origin of life, small droplets could have formed via the segregation of molecules from complex mixtures by phase separation. These droplets could have provided chemical reaction…
In living cells, cycles of formation and dissolution of liquid droplets can mediate biological functions such as DNA repair. However, the minimal physicochemical prerequisite for such droplet oscillations remains elusive. Here, we present a…
The breakup dynamics of viscous liquid bridges on solid surfaces is studied experimentally. It is found that the dynamics bears similarities to the breakup of free liquid bridges in the viscous regime. Nevertheless, the dynamics is…