软凝聚态物质
Toxic cyanobacterial blooms are a growing environmental concern that affects freshwater ecosystems, drinking water supplies, and public health. The cyanobacterium Microcystis is among the most important bloom forming species. It often grows…
Elastic wave propagation is intrinsically sensitive to the mechanical properties of the medium through which it travels. In soft elastomers, this makes guided elastic waves natural probes of viscoelastic and acoustoelastic behavior over a…
Granular materials are inherently out-of-equilibrium systems due to energy dissipation through inelastic collisions and friction. When driven by mechanical agitation such as vibration, they exhibit rich collective behaviors including…
{\it Jacob's ladder} -- a classic children's toy -- is a simple mechanical frame comprising rigid blocks connected by strings that shows curious unidirectional flipping waves. Nonetheless, its physical origin remains elusive. By combining…
Viscoelasticity governs the locomotion strategies of deformable microorganisms, rendering it a fundamental mechanical property of microbial motility and an integral component in the design of envisioned microbots. Recent studies have shown…
Understanding the electrical double layer (EDL), i.e, the distribution of electrolyte at an electrified interface, in concentrated electrolytes is important for various technologies, such as supercapacitors, batteries and electrocatalysis.…
The stochastic dynamics of flagellar beating for micro-swimmers, such as flagellated cells, sperms and microalgae, is widely thought to include a feedback mechanism between flagellar shape and the rate of activation/de-activation of the $N…
Ferroelectric nematic (NF) phase and related polar liquid-crystalline phases form a new class of strongly polarized yet fluid soft matter. Well-recognized heliconical ferroelectric phases such as NTBF and SmC_P^H exist, but their…
The subject of viscoelastic flow phenomena is crucial to many areas of engineering and the physical sciences. Although much of our understanding of viscoelastic flow features stems from carefully designed experiments, preparation of model…
Electric-field-driven electrolyte transport through nanoporous membranes is important for applications including osmotic power generation, sensing and iontronics. We derive an analytical equation in the Debye--H\"uckel regime and a…
We investigate how structural ordering, i.e. crystallization, affects the flow of bidisperse granular materials in a quasi-two-dimensional silo. By systematically varying the mass fraction of two particle sizes, we finely tune the degree of…
Self-propelled particles serve as minimal models for emulating the dynamic self-organization of microorganisms, yet most synthetic systems remain limited to a single mode of motion, namely active Brownian particles (ABPs). Here, we present…
When a hydrophilic and deformable porous material is immersed in a bath, it may absorb the solvent and expand by several times its volume, thus forming a highly soft and porous hydrogel. A stress applied on the soft hydrogel surface deforms…
Natural materials achieve adaptive behavior through hierarchical organization and coupled mechanisms across scales. Their translation into engineering, however, remains largely heuristic. What is missing is a formal translation framework…
Chemically active mixtures exhibit complex patterns that emerge from the interplay of physical interactions and reactions among components. Individually, these two processes are well-understood: Physical interactions can give rise to phase…
Experiments show that isochoric (constant-volume) conditions enhance supercooling stability relative to isobaric (constant-pressure) conditions. Here, combining Helmholtz equilibrium thermodynamics with a first-order perturbation…
We study experimentally and theoretically the Stokesian settling of a well-known class of porous shapes: Bravais lattice unit-cells, whose porosity we vary controllably by changing their lattice spacing. In our experiments, conducted in a…
In Escherichia coli (E. coli), entropic repulsion between the two daughter DNA ring polymers under cylindrical confinement is believed to be an important factor governing chromosomal segregation. The repulsion can be enhanced by topological…
The microscopic and fundamental origin of slide electrification, where droplets of water move across insulating surfaces accumulating and depositing electrical charges, is still debated. Charge transfer is often attributed to ion transfer…
Ultra-low-crosslinked (ULC) microgels are among the softest colloidal particles nowadays routinely synthesized experimentally. Despite a growing literature of experimental results, their microscopic behavior under crowded conditions is yet…