软凝聚态物质
Kelvin probe force microscopy (KPFM) is a powerful tool for studying contact electrification, using an tiny tip to image voltages caused by transferred charge. It has been used in stationary studies focused on finding patterns (e.g.…
Flagellar-driven locomotion plays a critical role in bacterial attachment and colonization of surfaces, contributing to the risks of contamination and infection. Tremendous attempts to uncover the underlying principles governing bacterial…
We investigate the concentration dependence of surfactant diffusion in wormlike micellar solutions using dissipative particle dynamics simulations. The simulations show that the self-diffusion coefficient of surfactants exhibits a…
The droplet size distribution typically decays exponentially in solutions formed by liquid-liquid phase separation. Nevertheless, a power-law distribution of nucleoli volumes has been observed in amphibian oocytes, which appears similar to…
To facilitate the understanding of the mechanisms underlying the electric breakdown of dielectric elastomers, we derive a one-dimensional (1d) model for axisymmetric necking in a dielectric membrane subjected to equibiaxial stretching and…
Active fluids generate spontaneous, often chaotic mesoscale flows. Harnessing these flows to drive embedded soft materials into structures with controlled length scales and lifetimes is a key challenge at the interface between the fields of…
We propose a path for making quantitative analyses of mean-square displacement curves of polymer chains in the melt or in solution. The approach invokes a general functional form that accurately describes $g(t) \equiv \langle (\Delta…
The interplay between densification and positional ordering during the process of crystal nucleation is a greatly investigated topic. Even for the simplest colloidal model -- hard spheres -- there has been much debate regarding the…
In the study of crystal nucleation via computer simulations, hard spheres are arguably the most extensively explored model system. Nonetheless, even in this simple model system, the complex thermodynamics of crystal nuclei can sometimes…
The interplay between crystal nucleation and the structure of the metastable fluid has been a topic of significant debate over recent years. In particular, it has been suggested that even in simple model systems such as hard or charged…
We study lipid translocation ("flip-flop") between the leaflets of a planar lipid bilayer with transition path sampling (TPS). Rare flip-flops compete with biological machineries that actively establish asymmetric lipid compositions.…
Cells and cellular organelles are encapsulated by nanometrically thin membranes whose main component is a lipid bilayer. In the presence of electric fields, the ion-impermeable lipid bilayer acts as a capacitor and supports a potential…
Fluid-fluid interfaces laden with discrete particles behave curiously like continuous elastic sheets, leading to their applications in emulsion and foam stabilization. Although existing continuum models can qualitatively capture the elastic…
The wrapping of particles and vesicles by lipid bilayer membranes is a fundamental process in cellular transport and targeted drug delivery. Here, we investigate the wrapping behavior of nonspherical vesicles, such as ellipsoidal, prolate,…
An elastomer swelling actuator deforms by absorbing a fluid, thus generating mechanical movement. We show that depositing small droplets of low molecular weight liquid crystal on liquid crystal elastomer (LCE) films leads to shape changes…
Tightly packed granular particles under shear often exhibit intriguing intermittencies, specifically, sudden stress drops that we refer to as quaking. To probe the nature of this phenomenon, we prototype a circular shear cell that is…
We report a surface instability observed during the extrusion of extremely soft elastic solids in confined geometries. Due to their unique rheological properties, these soft solids can migrate through narrow gaps by continuously everting…
Elastomeric mechanical metamaterials exhibit unconventional behaviour, emerging from their microstructures often deforming in a highly nonlinear and unstable manner. Such microstructural pattern transformations lead to non-local behaviour…
Mutual information between local stress and local non-affine deformation is proposed as a collective field variable quantifying the {\em local softness} of soft materials. The liquid-solid transition in a simple liquid is considered as a…
Despite being governed by the familiar laws of Hookean mechanics, elastic shells patterned with an internal structure (i.e. metashells) exhibit a wealth of unusual mechanical properties with no counterparts in unstructured materials. Here I…