Related papers: Adaptive hydrogels with spatiotemporal stiffening …
Biological systems process information under noisy environment. Sensory adaptation model of E. coli is suitable for investigation because of its simplicity. To understand the adaptation processing quantitatively, stochastic thermodynamic…
The non-Newtonian behaviors of dense suspensions are central to their use in technological and industrial applications and arise from a network of particle-particle contacts that dynamically adapts to imposed shear. Reported herein are…
Self-oscillating gels are chemically-responsive hydrogels coupled to an oscillating chemical reaction of a stimulus solute. In response to the oscillating solute concentration field, responsive gels periodically swell and deswell, expelling…
Understanding interfacial heat transfer between polymers and water is crucial for the design of biomaterials, drug delivery platforms, and nanofluidic systems. In this study, we employed all atom molecular dynamics (MD) simulations to…
In this study, we investigated the thermodynamic features of a system based on oppositely charged polyelectrolytes, sodium alginate, and poly(diallyldimethylammonium chloride) (PDADMAC) at different pH values. Additionally, a comparison of…
The structural dynamics of biological macromolecules, such as proteins, DNA/RNA, or complexes thereof, are strongly influenced by protonation changes of their typically many titratable groups, which explains their sensitivity to pH changes.…
Optimal characterization of the mechanical properties of both cells and their surrounding is an issue of major interest. Indeed, cell function and development are strongly influenced by external stimuli. Furthermore, a change in cell…
It is challenging to perform system identification on soft robots due to their underactuated, high-dimensional dynamics. In this work, we present a data-driven modeling framework, based on geometric mechanics (also known as gauge theory)…
Stimuli-responsive gels are the gels that vary the volume depending on environmental conditions. It has been reported that the stimuli-responsive gel with an inhomogeneous structure exhibits faster volume change than the gel without it. It…
Chemical algorithms are statistical algorithms described and represented as chemical reaction networks. They are particularly attractive for traffic shaping and general control of network dynamics; they are analytically tractable, they…
The associative interaction, such as hydrogen bonding, can bring about versatile functionalities to polymer systems, which has been investigated by tremendous researches, but the fundamental understanding on association process is still…
In this letter, we demonstrate that oscillations and excitable behavior can be imparted to a chemical network by coupling the network to an active hydrogel. We discuss two mechanisms by which the mechanical response of the gel to the…
Hypothesis: The peculiar swelling behaviour of poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAM)-based responsive microgels provides the possibility to tune both softness and volume fraction with temperature, making these systems of great interest for…
Sorbents are promising materials for applications in atmospheric water harvesting, thermal energy storage, and passive cooling, thereby addressing central challenges related to water scarcity and the global energy transition. Recently,…
High-density microfluidics is becoming an important experimental platform for studying complex biological systems such as synthetic gene regulatory networks, molecular biocomputating of engineered cells, distributing rapid point-of-care…
The synthesis of the high-$T_c$ superhydride CaH$_6$ has stimulated significant interest in understanding synthesis pathways for metastable hydrides. However, the microscopic mechanisms governing such hydrogenation reactions remain poorly…
Graphene-based nanostructured systems and van-der-Waals heterostructures comprise a material class of growing technological and scientific importance. Joining materials with vastly different properties, polymer-graphene heterosystems…
Robotic adaptation to unanticipated operating conditions is crucial to achieving persistence and robustness in complex real world settings. For a wide range of cutting-edge robotic systems, such as micro- and nano-scale robots, soft robots,…
Thermoresponsive microgels are soft colloids that find widespread use as model systems for soft matter physics. Their complex internal architecture, made of a disordered and heterogeneous polymer network, has been so far a major challenge…
It is established that the mechanical properties of hydrogels control the fate of (stem) cells. However, despite its importance, a one-to-one correspondence between gels' stiffness and cell behaviour is still missing from literature. In…