软凝聚态物质
While the autonomous assembly of hard nanoparticles with different shapes has been studied extensively both in experiment and simulations, little is known about systems where particle shape can be dynamically altered. DNA origami…
Electrospun yarns often fall short of the strength and stiffness of their constituent nanofibers because of loose packing and inter-fiber slip. We report a simple, twist-free route to close this gap by liquid-assisted rolling: yarns are…
Fabrics are flexible thin structures made of entangled yarn or fibers, yet the topological bases of their mechanics remain poorly understood. For weft knitted fabrics, we describe how the entanglement of adjacent stitches contributes to the…
Active processes in living systems generate nonequilibrium forces that deform embedded passive macromolecules. To understand how such dynamics influence polymer conformation, we study a flexible passive chain in an active nematic fluid.…
Polymer-grafted nanoparticles are versatile building blocks that self-assemble into a rich diversity of mesostructures. Coarse-grained molecular simulations have commonly accompanied experiments by resolving structure formation pathways and…
A large subset of the population suffers injury or disease that causes knee pain and difficulty navigating day-to-day tasks. Off-the-shelf knee orthoses that are commonly used to treat these ailments overlook user-specific joint geometry…
Topological defects are fundamental to the collective dynamics of non-equilibrium systems and in active matter, mediating spontaneous flows, dynamic self-organization, and emergent pattern formation. Here, we reveal critical states in…
Granular material has significant implications for industrial and geophysical processes. A long-lasting challenge, however, is seeking a unified rheology for its solid- and liquid-like behaviors under quasi-static, inertial, and even…
For equilibrium hard spheres the stochastic geometry of the insertion space, the room to accommodate another sphere, relates exactly to the equation of state. We begin to extend this idea to active matter, analyzing insertion space for…
We experimentally investigate the drag force exerted by a suspension of light-induced active particles (APs) on a translating and beating idealized flagellum-shaped object realized through negative phototactic interactions with the APs. We…
In the context of self-assembly, where complex structures can be assembled from smaller units, it is desirable to devise strategies towards disassembly and reassembly processes that reuse the constituent parts. A non-reciprocal multifarious…
Multifarious assembly models consider multiple structures assembled from a shared set of components, reflecting the efficient usage of components in biological self-assembly. These models are subject to a high-dimensional parameter space,…
Cononsolvency occurs when mixing two good solvents creates poor-solvent conditions for polymers over specific composition ranges, causing macroscopic phase separation or microscopic chain collapse. Despite its technological and biophysical…
Foam glass made from waste glass has high chemical and mechanical stability and flexible structural properties, making it suitable for a wide range of applications. To ensure its reliability, it is essential to understand its mechanical…
The accuracy of coarse-grained continuum models of dense granular flows is limited by the lack of high-fidelity closure models for granular rheology. One approach to addressing this issue, referred to as the hierarchical multiscale method,…
We experimentally study the heterogeneity of strain in a granular medium subjected to oscillatory shear in a rotating drum. Two complementary methods are used. The first method relies on optical imaging and grain tracking, allowing us to…
We present a detailed analytical and numerical examination, on square and triangular lattices, of the non-reciprocal planar spin model introduced in Dadhichi et al., Phys. Rev. E 101, 052601 (2020). We show that the effect of lattice…
A nonlinear continuum theory is advanced for high-rate mechanics and thermodynamics of liver parenchyma. The homogenized continuum is idealized as a solid-fluid mixture of dense viscoelastic tissue and liquid blood. The solid consists of a…
We illuminate the influence of transition mutations and disorder on charge localization and transfer along B-DNA sequences. Homopolymers are the best for charge transfer (cf. Refs.~ \cite{LVBMS:2018, MLTS:2019}). Hence, we consider as…
We numerically study the coarsening of topological defects in 2D polar active matter and make several interesting observations and predictions. (i) The long time state is characterized by nonzero density of defects, in stark contrast to…