Related papers: Local composition controls pattern formation in co…

We analyse a dynamic control problem for scalar reaction-diffusion equations, focusing on the emulation of pattern formation through the selection of appropriate active controls. While boundary controls alone prove inadequate for…

Living and engineered systems rely on the stable coexistence of two interspersed liquid phases. Yet surface tension drives their complete separation. Here we show that stable droplets of uniform and tuneable size can be produced through…

Pattern formation often occurs in confined systems, yet how boundaries shape patterning dynamics is unclear. We develop techniques to analyze confinement effects in nonlocal advection-diffusion equations, which generically capture the…

Intracellular protein patterns regulate a variety of vital cellular processes such as cell division and motility, which often involve dynamic changes of cell shape. These changes in cell shape may in turn affect the dynamics of…

Many structural properties of conventional passive materials are known to arise from the symmetries of their microscopic constituents. By contrast, it is largely unclear how the interplay between cell shape and self-propulsion controls the…

Conventional phase segregation is controlled by a positive interfacial tension, which implies that the system relaxes towards a state in which the interfacial area (or length) is minimized, typically manifesting as a single droplet that…

Biological membranes often exhibit heterogeneous protein patterns, which cells control. Strong patterns, like the polarity spot in budding yeast, can be described as surface condensates, formed by physical interactions between constituents.…

By analytically solving some simple models of phase-ordering kinetics, we suggest a mechanism for the onset of non-equilibrium behaviour in colloid-polymer mixtures. These mixtures can function as models of atomic systems; their physics…

Evaporating colloidal droplets have long been used as model systems to understand capillarity, interfacial transport, and particle assembly, most prominently through the coffee ring effect. In classical descriptions, suspended particles are…

Active particles, including swimming microorganisms, autophoretic colloids and droplets, are known to self-organize into ordered structures at fluid-solid boundaries. The entrainment of particles in the attractive parts of their spontaneous…

A lubrication model can be used to describe the dynamics of a weakly volatile viscous fluid layer on a hydrophobic substrate. Thin layers of the fluid are unstable to perturbations and break up into slowly evolving interacting droplets. A…

We use colloidal suspensions encapsulated in emulsion droplets to model confined glass-forming liquids with tunable boundary mobility. We show dynamics in these idealized systems are governed by physical interactions with the boundary.…

Phase separation between two fluids in two-dimensions is investigated by means of Direct Numerical Simulations of coupled Navier-Stokes and Cahn-Hilliard equations. We study the phase ordering process in the presence of an external stirring…

Phase separation within polymer networks plays a central role in shaping the structure and mechanics of both synthetic materials and living cells, including the formation of biomolecular condensates within cytoskeletal networks. Previous…

Phase separation under non-equilibrium conditions is exploited by biological cells to organize their cytoplasm but remains poorly understood as a physical phenomenon. Here, we study a ternary fluid model in which phase-separating molecules…

There is a large debate on the destabilization mechanism of emulsions. We present a simple technique using mechanical compression to destabilize oil-in-water emulsions. Upon compression of the emulsion, the continuous aqueous phase is…

Tissues are subjected to large external forces and undergo global deformations during morphogenesis. We use synthetic analogues of tissues to study the impact of cell-cell adhesion on the response of cohesive cellular assemblies under such…

The mechanism of coalescence of aqueous droplet pairs under an electric field is quantitatively studied using microfluidics in quiescent conditions. We experimentally trap droplet pairs and apply electric fields with varying frequencies and…

Numerous cell-types have shown a remarkable ability to detect and move along gradients in stiffness of an underlying substrate -- a process known as durotaxis. The mechanisms underlying durotaxis are still unresolved, but generally believed…

We present a field theory to describe the composition of a surface spontaneously exchanging matter with its bulk environment. By only assuming matter conservation in the system, we show with extensive numerical simulations that, depending…