Related papers: Macromolecular tribology at flowing solid/liquid i…
Water near hydrophobic surfaces is like that at a liquid-vapor interface, where fluctuations in water density are substantially enhanced compared to that in bulk water. Here we use molecular simulations with specialized sampling techniques…
Motile bacteria play essential roles in biology that rely on their dynamic behaviors, including their ability to navigate, interact, and self-organize. However, bacteria dynamics on fluid interfaces are not well understood. Swimmers…
The rotational Brownian motion of colloidal spheres in dense suspensions reflects local hydrodynamics and friction, both key to non-linear rheological phenomena such as shear-thickening and jamming, and transport in crowded environments,…
The dynamics of a tracer molecule near a fluid membrane is investigated, with particular emphasis given to the interplay between the instantaneous position of the particle and membrane fluctuations. It is found that hydrodynamic…
Photoresponsive surfactants provide a unique microfluidic driving mechanism. Since their molecular shapes change under illumination and thereby affect surface tension of fluid interfaces, Marangoni flow along the interface occurs. To…
Brownian motion is essential for describing diffusion in systems ranging from simple to complex liquids. Unlike simple liquids, which consist of only a solvent, complex liquids, such as colloidal suspensions or the cytoplasm of a cell, are…
Using coarse grained models we investigate the behavior of water adjacent to an extended hydrophobic surface peppered with various fractions of hydrophilic patches of different sizes. We study the spatial dependence of the mean interface…
Many vesicles have a spherical resting shape and exposure to fluid flows induces an exchange between sub-optical area and visible (systematic) deformation, while the total area is conserved. The dynamics which controls the exchange between…
The complicated dynamics of the contact line of a moving droplet on a solid substrate often hamper the efficient modeling of microfluidic systems. In particular, the selection of the effective boundary conditions, specifying the contact…
Biological adhesion is a critical mechanical function of complex organisms operating at multiple scales. At the cellular scale, cell-cell adhesion is remarkably tunable to enable both cohesion and malleability during development,…
The dynamics of compressible liquid-vapor flow depends sensitively on the microscale behavior at the phase boundary. We consider a sharp-interface approach, and propose a multiscale model to describe liquid-vapor flow accurately, without…
A detailed understanding of the interface between living cells and substrate materials is of rising importance in many fields of medicine, biology and biotechnology. Cells at interfaces often form epithelia. The physical barrier that they…
The friction and adhesion between elastic bodies are strongly influenced by the roughness of the surfaces in contact. Here we develop a multiscale molecular dynamics approach to contact mechanics, which can be used also when the surfaces…
Fluid flow through layered materials with different wetting behavior is observed in a wide range of applications in biological, environmental and technical systems. Therefore, it is necessary to understand the occuring transport mechanisms…
Microparticles migrate in response to gradients in solute concentration through diffusiophoresis and diffusioosmosis. Merging streams of fluid with distinct solute concentrations is a common strategy for producing a steady concentration…
Current experimental and theoretical studies on the effect of intermolecular interactions on molecular conduction appear to be in conflict with each other. In particular, some experimental results, e.g., the observation of 2-dimensional…
The nucleation of gas hydrates is of great interest in flow assurance, global energy demand, and carbon capture and storage. A complex molecular understanding is critical to control hydrate nucleation and growth in the context of potential…
Soft colloids are increasingly used as model systems to address fundamental issues such as crystallisation and the glass and jamming transitions. Among the available classes of soft colloids, microgels are emerging as the gold standard.…
We derive a connection between the intrinsic tribological properties and the electronic properties of a solid interface. In particular, we show that the adhesion and frictional forces are dictated by the electronic charge redistribution…
Friction, the resistive force between two surfaces sliding past each other, is at the core of a wide diversity of locomotion schemes. While such schemes are somewhat understood for homogeneous environments, locomotion based on friction in…