软凝聚态物质
Many biological machines function through controlled conformational transitions, yet designing synthetic nanostructures with prescribed dynamical behavior remains a major challenge. Here, we develop a modular inverse-design framework for…
Wormlike micellar fluids exhibit complex rheological behavior driven by the continuous breakage and recombination of self-assembled micellar networks. Existing two-species models provide a coarse binary representation of the micellar…
The linear response of wormlike chains in the nematic phase is studied by self-consistent field theory. The model Hamiltonian incorporates Maier--Saupe orientational interactions together with an isotropic excluded volume interaction. The…
Indentation is a practical route for probing soft materials when standard tests are difficult, destructive, or cannot be performed in situ. Conventional indentation is usually interpreted in the shallow-depth regime, where the indentation…
Photoelasticity is a qualitative and quantitative optical technique to image internal stress distributions in transparent materials. In the past few decades, discrete photoelastic particles have been used as a proxy for dry granular…
Physical heterogeneities in the context of sliding friction, such as a human finger exploring an object, have been well studied, yet the behavior of chemical heterogeneities in mesoscale soft sliding remains underexplored, despite the…
Conventional materials derive their properties from microscopic composition and arrangement, whereas mechanical metamaterials are defined by mesoscopic structure rather than constituent material. Bridging these paradigms, using macroscopic…
Mechanical stresses are fundamental regulators in biological tissues, where the vertex model (VM) is pivotal for theoretical and force-inference studies. Yet, no uniform expression for the stress tensor exists for the VM. Here we provide a…
It is well known that growing tumors generate and respond to stress in their local microenvironment. Tissue re-arrangements can relax these mechanical stresses and make the tissue more fluid-like. Further, intricate coupling between…
We investigate the emergence of flagellar beating in chains of magnetic self--propelled particles (MSPPs) built from centimeter--scale vibrating robots (Hexbugs) with embedded neodymium dipoles. When one end of the chain is anchored and…
Shearing a packing of solid granular grains can be difficult, especially when the solid fraction is high and the boundary confinement is strong. It was recently shown that embedding voids in grains can make a packing easier to shear when…
We present an exact variational scheme for the physics of inhomogeneous classical fluids in thermal equilibrium. A joint metadensity minimization principle is proven for the one-body density and the global interparticle distance…
Bubble coalescence phenomenon in electrolytic media finds applications in technologies from mineral flotation to electrochemical energy conversion. However, the underlying governing physics still remains unresolved, with longstanding…
Fluid transport in deformable porous media is central to many biophysical and geophysical processes. While extensive studies exist, how porosity governs fluid behaviour in deformable systems during cyclic injection remains elusive. Here, we…
We investigate the random close packing density, $\phi_\textrm{RCP}$, of polydisperse hard sphere systems using a theoretical framework based on the equilibrium model of crowding. We derive a closed-form solution for $\phi_\textrm{RCP}$ in…
Tailoring microscopic details to tune bulk rheology is a key paradigm in soft matter physics, yet the vast parameter space associated with constituent interactions precludes a fully systematic approach. To address this, we have designed a…
Grain piles embody the complex mechanics and kinematics of disordered granular materials, including solid-like and fluid-like behaviours, complex kinematics, and preparation history-dependent stress variation. It is widely believed that the…
Microfluidic channels have emerged as useful tools to control dynamic forcing on transported microscale objects, as encountered in emulsions, biological flows, and other soft matter systems. Tailored channel designs enable precise…
Electrostatic interactions are key to the recognition processes of proteins and DNA and have been previously documented for the action of repair enzymes. Uracil-DNA glycosylase (UDG) is the first in a sequence of enzymes that act in the…
We present an exact solution of the discrete wormlike chain (DWLC) model describing a single semiflexible polymer under arbitrary external force. Through exact closure relations between pair angular correlations and single-site angular…