Related papers: Pore Stability and Dynamics in Polymer Membranes
The transport of particles across lipid-bilayer membranes is important for biological cells to exchange information and material with their environment. Large particles often get wrapped by membranes, a process which has been intensively…
Active droplets can swim spontaneously in viscous flows as a result of the non-linear convective transport of a chemical solute produced at their surface by the Marangoni and/or phoretic flows generated by this solute's inhomogeneous…
The influence of surface constraints on the self-assembly of liquid droplets is investigated. A semi-quantitative explanation for large scale pattern formation consisting of small scale closely arranged droplets inside the large scale…
We report a simple route to form robust, inorganic, semi-permeable compartments composed of montmorillonite, a natural plate-like clay mineral that occurs widely in the environment. Mechanical forces due to shear in a narrow gap assemble…
Spontaneous segregation of run-and-tumble particles with different velocities in microchannels is investigated by numerical simulations. Self-propelled particles are known to accumulate in the proximity of walls. Here we show how fast…
A layered system of two-dimensional planes containing fermionic polar molecules can potentially realize a number of exotic quantum many-body states. Among the predictions, are density-wave instabilities driven by the anisotropic part of the…
Ensembles of particles rotating in a two-dimensional fluid can exhibit chaotic dynamics yet develop signatures of hidden order. Such "rotors" are found in the natural world spanning vastly disparate length scales - from the rotor proteins…
We explore the interplay of membrane curvature and nonspecific binding due to excluded-volume effects among colloidal particles inside lipid bilayer vesicles. We trapped submicron spheres of two different sizes inside a pear-shaped,…
Usually, we expect large particles to sediment faster than small of the same material. Contrary to this intuition, we report a dynamical competition between sedimentation and phase ordering which leads to smaller particles settling faster…
Mesh-like structures, such as mucus gel or cytoskeleton networks, are ubiquitous in biological systems. These intricate structures are composed of cross-linked, semi-flexible bio-filaments, crucial to numerous biological processes. In many…
We develop a new model, to our knowledge, for the many-body hydrodynamics of amphiphilic Janus particles suspended in a viscous background flow. The Janus particles interact through a hydrophobic attraction potential that leads to…
We investigate the dynamics of an ensemble of inelastic hard spheres confined between two horizontal plates separated a distance smaller than twice the diameter of the particles, in such a way that the system is quasi-two-dimensional. The…
Biological membranes are host to proteins and molecules which may form domain-like structures resulting in spatially-varying material properties. Vesicles with such heterogeneous membranes can exhibit intricate shapes at equilibrium and…
Biological membranes mainly consist of lipids and proteins. While the proteins have many functions as single molecules, the membrane as a whole displays physical properties that cannot be explained on the single molecule level. For example,…
Partitioning of (bio)materials in polymeric mixtures is a key phenomenon both in cellular environments, as well as in industrial applications. In cells, several macromolecules are suspended within different biomolecular phases. On the other…
Transport of microscopic objects across biological membranes usually involves membrane deformation to enclose the object followed by detachment of the engulfed particle. However, in artificial membranes, this last topological remodelling…
We theoretically investigate the thermally-driven curvature and lipid density fluctuations of a quasi-spherical vesicle, accounting for the dissipation due to monolayer viscosity and intermonolayer friction. The theory predicts that…
Low-density "equilibrium" gels that consist of a percolated, kinetically arrested network of colloidal particles and are resilient to aging can be fabricated by restricting the number of effective bonds that form between the colloids.…
Building structures with hierarchical order through the self-assembly of smaller blocks is not only a prerogative of nature, but also a strategy to design artificial materials with tailored functions. We explore in simulation the…
The generation of nanoscale square and stripe patterns is of major technological importance since they are compatible with industry-standard electronic circuitry. Recently, a blend of diblock copolymer interacting via hydrogen-bonding was…