Related papers: Pattern formation driven by nematic ordering of as…
We explore a novel strategy of patterning nematic elastomers that does not require inscribing the texture directly. It is based on varying the dopant concentration that, beside shifting the phase transition point, affects the nematic…
The interplay between active matter and its environment is central to understanding emergent behavior in biological and synthetic systems. Here, we show that coupling active nematic flows to small-amplitude deformations of a compliant…
A self-interacting polymer can undergo an orientational ordering transition, depending on the magnitude of the nematic interaction. The effect of embedding such a polymer into a flexible surface on this transition is studied on the…
Although the pattern formation on polymer gels has been considered as a result of the mechanical instability due to the volume phase transition, we found a macroscopic surface pattern formation not caused by the mechanical instability. It…
We systematically explore the self-assembly of semi-flexible polymers in deformable spherical confinement across a wide regime of chain stiffness, contour lengths and packing fractions by means of coarse-grained molecular dynamics…
Despite their considerable practical and biological applications, the link between molecular properties, assembly conditions and self-organized structure in confined polymer solutions remains elusive. Here, we explore the lyotropic nematic…
Ordered, collective motions commonly arise spontaneously in systems of many interacting, active units, ranging from cellular tissues and bacterial colonies to self-propelled colloids and animal flocks. Active phases are especially rich when…
Recent experiments have exploited elastic instabilities in membranes to create complex patterns. However, the rational design of such structures poses many challenges, as they are products of nonlinear elastic behavior. We pose a simple…
Turing instability in activator-inhibitor systems provides a paradigm of nonequilibrium pattern formation; it has been extensively investigated for biological and chemical processes. Turing pattern formation should furthermore be possible…
Continuum models of active nematic gels have proved successful to describe a number of biological systems consisting of a population of rodlike motile subunits in a fluid environment. However, in order to get a thorough understanding of the…
The rheological properties of biological tissues are core to processes such as cancer metastasis, wound healing and embryo development. The emergence of tissue and organ structures during morphogenesis requires the precise formation of…
Recently, we proposed a self-propelled particle model with competing alignment interactions: nearby particles tend to align their velocities whereas they anti-align their direction of motion with particles which are further away [R.…
Partially phase-separated liquid-crystal/polymer dispersions display highly fibrillar domain morphologies that are dramatically different from the typical structures found in isotropic mixtures. To explain this, we numerically explore the…
We numerically examine a binary system of particles with repulsive interactions, where one species is driven by a rotating drive and the other is subjected either to a constant drive in a fixed direction or to a rotating drive that is out…
There is a growing interest, inspired by advances in technology, in the low temperature physics of thin films. These quasi-2D systems show a wide range of ordering effects including formation of striped states, reorientation transitions,…
We used nonequilibrium molecular dynamics simulations to study the shear deformation of metallic composites composed of alternating layers of Cu and Au. Our simulations reveal the formation of "vortices" or "swirls" if the bimaterial…
We consider the impact of the elastomer network on the structure and fluctuations in the isotropic-genesis nematic elastomer, via a phenomenological model that underscores the role of network compliance. The model contains a…
Motivated by recent experiments on growing fibroblasts, we examine the development of nematic order in a colony of elongated cells proliferating on a nematic elastomer substrate. After sparse seeding, the cells divide and grow into locally…
Active semiflexible filament collectives, ranging from motor-driven cytoskeletal filaments to slender organisms such as cyanobacteria and worm aggregates, abound in nature. Yet how activity and flexibility jointly govern their organization,…
The evolution of the atomic structures of the combinatorial library of Sm-substituted thin film BiFeO3 along the phase transition boundary from the ferroelectric rhombohedral phase to the non-ferroelectric orthorhombic phase is explored…