Related papers: Enhancing protein drop stability for crystallizati…

We construct a new hydrodynamic framework describing plastic deformations in electronic crystals. The framework accounts for pinning, phase, and momentum relaxation effects due to translational disorder, diffusion due to the presence of…

Controlling the spatial distribution of liquid droplets on surfaces via surface energy patterning can be used to control material delivery to specified regions via selective liquid/solid wetting. While studies of the equilibrium shape of…

Photonic crystals are extremely sensitive to structural disorder even to the point of completely losing their functionalities. While on one side this can be detrimental for applications in traditional optical devices, on the other side, it…

Droplet coalescence is ubiquitous in nature and the same time key to various technologies, such as inkjet printing. Here, we report on the coalescence of polymer droplets with different chain lengths coalescing on substrates of different…

Proteins tend to bury hydrophobic residues inside their core during the folding process to provide stability to the protein structure and to prevent aggregation. Nevertheless, proteins do expose some 'sticky' hydrophobic residues to the…

Complex crystal structures are composed of multiple local environments, and how this type of order emerges spontaneously during crystal growth has yet to be fully understood. We study crystal growth across various structures and along…

DNA nanostructures with programmable shape and interactions can be used as building blocks for the self-assembly of crystalline materials with prescribed nanoscale features, holding a vast technological potential. Structural rigidity and…

Exploiting elastic instability in thin films has proven a robust method for creating complex patterns and structures across a wide range of lengthscales. Even the simplest of systems, an elastic membrane with a lattice of pores, under…

The two key phenomena occurring in the process of ceramic powder compaction are the progressive gain in cohesion and the increase of elastic stiffness, both related to the development of plastic deformation. The latter effect is an example…

A potential strategy for controlling stratification in a drying suspension of bidisperse particles is studied using molecular dynamics simulations. When the suspension is maintained at a constant temperature during fast drying, it can…

The behavior of proteins near interfaces is relevant for biological and medical purposes. Previous results in bulk show that, when the protein concentration increases, the proteins unfold and, at higher concentrations, aggregate. Here, we…

Crystallization is a key step in macromolecular structure determination by crystallography. While a robust theoretical treatment of the process is available, due to the complexity of the system, the experimental process is still largely one…

We study numerically the crystallization of a hard-sphere mixture with 8\% polydispersity. Although often used as a model glass former, for small system sizes we observe crystallization in molecular dynamics simulations. This opens the…

Water plays a fundamental role in protein stability. However, the effect of the properties of water on the behaviour of proteins is only partially understood. Several theories have been proposed to give insight into the mechanisms of cold…

Unstable systems of fluidized grains in a very-narrow vertical tube can auto-defluidize after some time, the settling particles forming either a glass- or crystal-like structure. We carried out experiments using different polymer spheres,…

We describe a series of experiments involving the creation of cylindrical packings of star-shaped particles, and an exploration of the stability of these packings. The stars cover a broad range of arm sizes and frictional properties. We…

Local contact line pinning prevents droplets from rearranging to minimal global energy, and models for droplets without pinning cannot predict their shape. We show that experiments are much better described by a theory, developed herein,…

Motivated by recent experiments, we consider theoretically the compression of droplets pinned at the bottom on a surface of finite area. We show that if the droplet is sufficiently compressed at the top by a surface, it will always develop…

We investigate the mechanics of elastic fibres carrying liquid droplets. In such systems, buckling may localize inside the drop cavity if the fibre is thin enough. This so-called drop-on-coilable-fibre system exhibits a surprising…

We show that colloidal molecular crystal states interacting with a periodic substrate, such as an optical trap array, and a rotating external field can undergo a rapid pattern switching in which the orientation of the crystal changes. In…