软凝聚态物质
Characterizing the local voltage distribution within nanophysiological domains, driven by ionic currents through membrane channels, is crucial for studying cellular activity in modern biophysics, yet it presents significant experimental and…
Soft solids and their surface deformations control the response of many natural and artificial systems. Yet, their underlying properties are vigorously debated, particularly for polymer networks. While molecular-scale theories predict no…
Viscosity, the resistance of a liquid to flow, is driven by atomic-scale friction but its microscopic origin remains poorly understood. We use a theoretical framework based on nonaffine linear response to decompose the viscosity of metallic…
Polarizable particle systems, including charged colloids, polarizable ions, biomolecular assemblies, and soft nanomaterials, can exhibit contact electrostatic interactions that depart strongly from Coulomb behavior when dielectric mismatch…
Tissue-scale shape changes are driven by ensembles of intracellular forces. However measuring force in these contexts remains a difficult challenge. Here we perform spectral analysis of transverse fluctuations of cell-cell junctions in…
Three-dimensional X-ray microtomography, coupled to rheometric measurements, enables a morphology-resolved reconstruction of capillary stresses at the grain scale in unsaturated wet granular materials. Liquid domains are automatically…
Poroelastic materials, consisting of a permeable solid matrix infiltrated with fluid, are ubiquitous in natural and engineering contexts. In poroelastic polymer solids, the elastic matrix swells to equilibrium when immersed in a solvent…
Developing tissues often maintain mechanical coherence while continuously remodeling through cellular processes such as cell divisions and rearrangements. In this way, they are an example of amorphous solids. In passive amorphous solids,…
The spacial heterogeneity of hydrogels composed of PEGDA and added polymer chains is expected to play a crucial role on their transport properties which can be exploited in filtration or tissue engineering. However little is known about the…
A paradigm for the study of wrinkling in elastic sheet is the Lam\'{e} configuration, in which azimuthal wrinkles form in an annular sheet subjected to tensile loads at both edges. Since wrinkles are spatially extended, this instability…
The rheology of phase-separated condensates plays a central role in applications spanning advanced materials design and cellular processes, yet quantitative characterization of their viscoelasticity remains challenging due to the…
Double network (DN) materials exhibit anomalous strength and toughness that far exceed the sum of their constituents. While widely exploited, the fundamental physical mechanisms underlying this synergy remain elusive. Here, we show that a…
Liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) are elastomeric networks with rod-like mesogens that reorient under load. In polydomain LCEs, this reorientation drives a polydomain-to-monodomain transition that produces a soft-elastic plateau. Coupling…
The polarization and density modulation associated with antiferroelectric ordering is studied experimentally as a function of temperature in two ferroelectric nematic liquid crystals, the prototypical single compound (DIO) and a commercial…
Internally generated active stresses drive soft materials into architectures inaccessible to thermal self-assembly. We use a microtubule-based active fluid to assemble and irreversibly restructure actin-fascin networks. Subsequently, we…
We develop a theory that predicts the equilibrium states of a fluid contained in a capillary which has corners. Each section of the tube can take three states: completely wet state where the tube section is completely occupied by the fluid,…
The limitations of conventional mineral oil-based lubricants motivate the development of environmentally benign emulsions capable of providing lubrication and heat dissipation in demanding applications. In this study, nano-organoclay…
Guided by recent advances in the understanding of nucleation and propagation of fracture in elastic brittle materials, this paper proposes a suite of three simple experiments that permit the measurement of the three macroscopic material…
The effect of space distribution of randomly-placed particles in a representative composite volume on the thermoelastic effective properties and local stress and strain distribution is analyzed. Quantitative assessment is performed using…
We present a time-dependent pore-network model that couples transient mass transfer in the aqueous phase, capillary pressure heterogeneity, and realistic pore-throat geometries to capture the dynamic evolution of gas clusters during Ostwald…