Related papers: Enhancing protein drop stability for crystallizati…

Proteins dissolved in a drop induce and enhance the pinning of the drop contact line. This effect dramatically increases volume of drops that are vertically pinned on a flat siliconized substrate. The drop pinning behavior exhibits two…

We explore how chemical patterning on surfaces can be used to control drop wetting. Both numerical and experimental results are presented to show how the dynamic pathway and equilibrium shape of the drops are altered by a hydrophobic grid.…

In microfluidic technologies, direct patterning of liquid without resorting to micromachined solid structures has various advantages including reduction of the frictional dissipation and the fabrication cost. This fluid dynamics video…

We explore numerically the feasibility of using chemical patterning to control the size and polydispersity of micron-scale drops. The simulations suggest that it is possible to sort drops by size or wetting properties by using an array of…

Using a phase field crystal model we study the structure and dynamics of a drop of colloidal suspension during evaporation of the solvent. We model an experimental system where contact line pinning of the drop on the substrate is…

The ability to control the crystallization behaviour (including its absence) of particles, be they biomolecules such as globular proteins, inorganic colloids, nanoparticles, or metal atoms in an alloy, is of both fundamental and…

Droplet-based microfluidics has emerged as a powerful technology for the miniaturization and automation of biochemical assays. The replacement of surfactants by nanoparticles as interfacial stabilizers has gained increasing interest.…

In supercooled liquids, vitrification generally suppresses crystallization. Yet some glasses can still crystallize despite the arrest of diffusive motion. This ill-understood process may limit the stability of glasses, but its microscopic…

Crystallization of proteins, specifically proteins of medical relevance, is performed for various reasons such as to understand the protein structure and to design therapies. Obtaining kinetic constants in rate laws for nucleation and…

X-ray crystallography is the predominant method for obtaining atomic-scale information about biological macromolecules. Despite the success of the technique, obtaining well diffracting crystals still critically limits going from protein to…

We compare numerical and experimental results exploring the behaviour of liquid drops moving across a surface patterned with hydrophobic and hydrophilic stripes. A lattice Boltzmann algorithm is used to solve the hydrodynamic equations of…

A deposited drop of bovine serum albumin salt solution experiences both gelation and fracturation during evaporation. The cracks appearing at the edge of the gelling drop are regularly spaced, due to the competition between the…

Pinning of liquid droplets on solid substrates is ubiquitous and plays an essential role in many applications, especially in various areas, such as microfluidics and biology. Although pinning can often reduce the efficiency of various…

Employing a long-wave mesoscopic hydrodynamic model for the film height evolution we study ensembles of pinned and sliding drops of a volatile liquid that continuously condense onto a chemically heterogeneous inclined substrate. Our…

The shape of a drop pinned in a local equilibrium on an incline is a long-standing problem. The substrate can be homogeneous or heterogeneous and we herewith consider a drop pinned on an incline at the junction between a hydrophilic…

Advances in experimental techniques and in theoretical models have improved our understanding of protein crystallization. But they have also left open questions regarding the protein phase behavior and self-assembly kinetics, such as why…

We use computer simulation to study crystal-forming model proteins equipped with interactions that are both orientationally specific and nonspecific. Distinct dynamical pathways of crystal formation can be selected by tuning the strengths…

We examine the interactions between actively rotating proteins moving in a membrane. Experimental evidence suggests that such rotor proteins, like the ATP synthases of the inner mitochondrial membrane, can arrange themselves into lattices.…

The effect of freezing on contact line motion is a scientific challenge in the understanding of the solidification of capillary flows. In this letter, we experimentally investigate the spreading and freezing of a water droplet on a cold…

We present a comprehensive study of water drops sliding down chemically heterogeneous surfaces formed by a periodic pattern of alternating hydrophobic and hydrophilic stripes. Drops are found to undergo a stick-slip motion whose average…