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A simple three-dimensional model of a fluid whose constituent particles interact via a short range attractive and long range repulsive potential is used to model the aggregation into large spherical-like clusters made up of hundreds of…
We discuss a curious example for the collective mechanical behavior of coupled non-linear monomer units entrapped in a circular filament. Within a simple model we elucidate how multistability of monomer units and exponentially large…
Polymer solutions exhibit anomalous flow thickening -- marked by an abrupt increase in the macroscopic flow resistance -- above a threshold flow rate in a porous medium, but not in bulk solution. This phenomenon has evaded a mechanistic…
Accumulation of particles while flowing past constrictions is a ubiquitous phenomenon observed in diverse systems. Some of the common examples are jamming of salt crystals near the orifice of salt shakers, clogging of filter systems,…
Understanding interactions between microparticles and lipid membranes is of increasing importance, especially for unraveling the influence of microplastics on our health and environment. Here, we study how a short-ranged adhesive force…
The moir\'e superstructure of graphene grown on metals can drive the assembly of molecular architectures, as iron-phthalocyanine (FePc) molecules, allowing for the production of artificial molecular configurations. A detailed analysis of…
We present a quantitative confocal-microscopy study of the transient and final microstructure of particle-stabilised emulsions formed via demixing in a binary liquid. To this end, we have developed an image-analysis method that relies on…
Activity and self-generated motion are fundamental features observed in many living and non-living systems. Given that inter-particle adhesive forces are known to regulate particle dynamics, we investigate how adhesion strength controls the…
We use mesoscale simulations to gain insight into the digestion of biopolymers by studying the break-up dynamics of polymer aggregates (boluses) bound by physical cross-links. We investigate aggregate evolution, establishing that the…
Diffusive transport of small molecules within the internal structures of biological and synthetic material systems is complex because the crowded environment presents chemical and physical barriers to mobility. We explored this mobility…
In conductor-insulator nanocomposites in which conducting fillers are dispersed in an insulating matrix the electrical connectedness is established by interparticle tunneling or hopping processes. These systems are intrinsically…
Biological and robotic systems often operate in confined environments where material must be gathered without centralized control. Inspired by the effective collection strategies of aquatic worms (Lumbriculus variegatus and Tubifex…
We show that the force generated by active enzyme molecules are strong enough to influence the dynamics of their surroundings under artificial crowded environments. We measured the behavior of polymer microparticles in a…
Using self-consistent field and density-functional theories, we first investigate colloidal self-assembling of colloid/polymer films confined between two soft surfaces grafted by polymers. With the increase of colloidal concentrations, the…
Depletion-induced aggregation of rods enhanced by clustering is observed to produce a novel model of attractive pairs of rods separated by a line of spheres in a quasi-2D, vertically-shaken, granular gas of rods and spheres. We show that…
Anisotropic colloidal particles have the ability to self-assemble into cholesteric structures. We used molecular dynamics to simulate the self-assembly of ellipsoidal particles with the objective to establish a general framework to reveal…
Using confocal microscopy we investigate the effect of attraction on the packing of polydisperse emulsions under gravity. We find that the distributions of neighbors, coordination number, and local packing fraction as a function of…
The colonisation of a soft passive material by motile cells such as bacteria is common in biology. The resulting colonies of the invading cells are often observed to exhibit intricate patterns whose morphology and dynamics can depend on a…
We consider a biopolymer bundle consisting of filaments that are crosslinked together. The crosslinks are reversible: they can dynamically bind and unbind adjacent filament pairs as controlled by a binding enthalpy. The bundle is subjected…
We propose a continuum theory to model the Mullins effect, which is ubiquitously observed in polymer composites. In the theory, the softening of the materials during the stretching process is accounted for by considering the delamination of…