Related papers: The Influence of Substrate Structure on Membrane A…
We study the deformation of a liquid interface with arbitrary principal curvatures by a flat circular sheet. Working first at small slopes, we determine the shape of the sheet analytically in the membrane limit, where the sheet is…
We use molecular simulations to explore how sample dimensions and interfacial properties impact some generic aspects of the mechanical and structural behavior of nanoconfined materials. Specifically, we calculate the strain-dependent…
In this paper, we study the equilibrium properties of polymer chains end-tethered to a fluid membrane. The loss of conformational entropy of the polymer results in an inhomogeneous pressure field that we calculate for gaussian chains. We…
Confinement can have a dramatic effect on the behavior of all sorts of particulate systems and it therefore is an important phenomenon in many different areas of physics and technology. Here, we investigate the role played by the softness…
The optimal shapes attained by contractile cells on adhesive substrates are determined by the interplay between intracellular forces and adhesion with the extracellular matrix. We model the cell as a contractile film bounded by an elastic…
With the aim of understanding failure modes in the peeling of silicone-based adhesive joints and, in particular, the occurrence of adhesive or cohesive failure, an experimental campaign has been conducted by considering plastic substrates…
There are three regimes of cell membrane interaction with glass - Tight and loose adhesion, separated by repulsion. Explicitly including hydration, this paper evaluates the pressure between the surfaces as functions of distance for…
We study the indentation of a free-standing lipid membrane suspended over a nanopore on a hydrophobic substrate by means of molecular dynamics simulations. We find that in the course of indentation, the membrane bends at the point of…
Multi-material lightweight designs, e.g. the combination of aluminum with fiber-reinforced composites, are a key feature for the development of innovative and resource-efficient products. The connection properties of such bi-material…
We evaluate the effective Hamiltonian governing, at the optically resolved scale, the elastic properties of micro-manipulated membranes. We identify floppy, entropic-tense and stretched-tense regimes, representing different behaviors of the…
A cell membrane can be simply regarded as composite material consisting of lipid bilayer, membrane cytoskeleton beneath lipid bilayer, and proteins embedded in lipid bilayer and linked with membrane cytoskeleton if one only concerns its…
Many cell functions require a concerted effort from multiple membrane proteins, for example, for signaling, cell division, and endocytosis. One contribution to their successful self-organization stems from the membrane deformations that…
Using the recently developed so-called White Bear version of Rosenfeld's Fundamental Measure Theory we calculate the depletion potentials between a hard-sphere colloidal particle in a solvent of small hard spheres and simple models of…
Intermolecular forces are known to precipitate adhesion events between solid bodies. Inspired by a macro-scale experiment showing the hysteretic adhesion of a piece of flexible tape over a plastic substrate, we develop here a model of…
An elastic membrane that is forced to reside in a container smaller than its natural size will deform and, upon further volume reduction, eventually crumple. The crumpled state is characterized by the localization of energy in a complex…
It is demonstrated in the context of the simple one-dimensional example of a barrier in an infinite well, that highly complex behavior of the time evolution of a wave function is associated with the almost degeneracy of levels in the…
Understanding contact line dynamics on superhydrophobic surfaces with microscopic structures is essential for designing materials with reduced drag, anti-icing, self-cleaning, and anti-fouling properties. Using numerical simulations, we…
Cellularized tissue and polymer networks can both transition from floppy to rigid as a function of their control parameters, and, yet, the two systems often mechanically interact, which may affect their respective rigidities. To study this…
We study a physical model for the interaction between general inclusions bound to fluid membranes that possess finite tension, as well as the usual bending rigidity. We are motivated by an interest in proteins bound to cell membranes that…
The statistical mechanics of flexible two-dimensional surfaces (membranes) appears in a wide variety of physical settings. In this talk we discuss the simplest case of fixed-connectivity surfaces. We first review the current theoretical…