Related papers: Adaptive hydrogels with spatiotemporal stiffening …
Polymer gels with photo-responsive cross-links enable tunable mechanics and surface morphologies, making them promising for adaptive materials. While prior work on coumarin cross-linked gels has focused on photo-mediated events in dilute…
Local changes in pH are known to significantly alter the state and activity of proteins and in particular enzymes. pH variations induced by pulses propagating along soft interfaces (e.g. the lipid bilayer) would therefore constitute an…
Hydrogen is key in reducing greenhouse gas emissions in materials production. At the same time, it significantly affects mechanical properties, often causing unwanted embrittlement. However, rather than solely addressing these…
Acid-induced release of stored ions from polyacrylic acid hydrogels (with a free surface fully permeable to the ion and acid flux) was observed to increase the gel osmotic pressure that leads to rapid, temporary swelling faster than the…
In this paper we study the elastic response of synthetic hydrogels to an applied shear stress. The hydrogels studied here have previously been shown to mimic the behaviour of biopolymer networks when they are sufficiently far above the gel…
In studies of the dynamic failure of brittle hydrogels, a bound has been placed on the process zone scale - the scale where material separation and ultimate failure occur. For the polyacrylamide hydrogel system under study, this bound is…
We investigate the optical properties of hydrogen as it undergoes a transition from the insulating molecular to the metallic atomic phase, when heated by a pulsed laser at megabar pressures in a diamond anvil cell. Most current experiments…
A low-temperature dynamical transition has been reported in several proteins. We provide the first observation of a `protein-like' dynamical transition in nonbiological aqueous environments. To this aim we exploit the popular colloidal…
Computational modelling of metal-electrolyte reactions is central to the understanding and prediction of a wide range of physical phenomena, yet this is often challenging owing to the presence of numerical oscillations that arise due to…
A new consistent, spatially adaptive, smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) method for Fluid-Structure Interactions (FSI) is presented. The method combines several attributes that have not been simultaneously satisfied by other SPH methods.…
Owing to the possibility of controlling its specific mechanical behaviors up taken by irradiated by light at particular wavelengths, the photoisomerization hydrogels have a broad range of potential applications. A theory connecting the…
The design of exudate-managing wound dressings is an established route to accelerated healing, although such design remains a challenge from material and manufacturing standpoints. Aiming towards the clinical translation of knowledge gained…
Living microorganisms have evolved dedicated sensory machinery to detect environmental perturbations, processing these signals through biochemical networks to guide behavior. Replicating such capabilities in synthetic active matter remains…
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…
Particle surface chemistry and internal softness are two fundamental parameters in governing the mechanical properties of dense colloidal suspensions, dictating structure and flow, therefore of interest from materials fabrication to…
Density functional calculations are employed to study the molecular dissociation of hydrogen on graphene, the diffusion of chemisorbed atomic species, and the electronic properties of the resulting hydrogen on graphene system. Our results…
In a recent work we proposed a coarse-grained methodology for studying the response of peptides when simulated at different values of pH; in this work we extend the methodology to analyze the pH-dependent behavior of coiled coils. This…
Unstructured proteins can modulate cellular responses to environmental conditions by undergoing coil-globule transitions and phase separation. However, the molecular mechanisms of these phenomena still need to be fully understood. Here, we…
Tuning the local film stress (and associated strain) provides a universal route towards exerting dynamic control on propagating fields in nanoscale geometries, and engineering controlled interactions between them. The majority of existing…
In models of Pt 111 and Pt 100 surfaces in water, motions of molecules in the first hydration layer are spatially and temporally correlated. To interpret these collective motions, we apply quantitative measures of dynamic heterogeneity that…