软凝聚态物质
A model for the tensorial dielectric permittivity of phospholipid membranes is presented here. The four-nanometer-thick membrane is treated as a composite made up of three dielectric slabs: one for each of the two phospholipid head-group…
Although numerical simulations of rheological measurements typically focus on homogeneous systems, heterogeneity can profoundly impact material properties. We report on the rheological properties of a suspension of two-dimensional…
Fluid phase equilibrium depends on the external constraints imposed on a system. In a closed system with fixed volume, depending on the average density, a vapor bubble may be stable, metastable, or unstable, with respect to the homogeneous…
The coalescence of liquid lenses is relevant in various applications, including inkjet printing and fog harvesting. However, the dynamics of liquid-lens coalescence have been relatively underexplored, particularly in the case of liquid…
Collective motion is ubiquitous in active systems at all length and time scales. The mechanisms behind such collective motion usually are alignment interactions between active particles, effective alignment after collisions between agents…
In hydrodynamic descriptions of lipid bilayers, the membrane is often approximated as being impermeable to the surrounding, solute-containing fluid. However, biological and in vitro lipid membranes are influenced by their permeability and…
Nanoscale films play a central role in biology and osmotic separations. Their water/salt selectivity is often regarded as intrinsic property, favoring thinner membranes for faster permeation. Here we highlight and quantify a fundamental…
Mixtures of active and passive particles are ubiquitous at the microscale. Many essential microbial processes involve interactions with dead or immotile cells or passive crowders. When passive objects are immersed in active baths, their…
Focusing on simulated dilute polymer solutions, this letter investigates the interactions between flow structures and organized polymer stress sheets for the steady arrowhead coherent structure in a two-dimensional periodic channel flow.…
Interaction of electric fields with biological cells is indispensable for many physiological processes. Thermal electrical noise in the cellular environment has long been considered as the minimum threshold for detection of electrical…
Active soft matter frequently shows motility-induced phase separation (MIPS), where self-propelled particles condensate into clusters with an inner liquid-like structure. Such activity may also result in motility-induced crystallization…
We use confocal microscopy to image colloidal gels formed from highly polydisperse particles. We suspend our polydisperse particles in a density matched solvent, and let the particles spontaneously aggregate through the van der Waals force.…
The forces that mixtures of motorized and passive crosslinking proteins collectively generate between cytoskeletal filaments within our cells are the key drivers of active cellular mechanics. Despite their importance, a unified theory to…
We investigate how controlled foaming alters the mechanical dissipation of liquid crystalline elastomers (LCEs). Using thermal expandable microspheres, we generate homogeneous foams with precisely tuned bubble volume fractions up to 13% and…
Complex systems out of equilibrium often experience intermittent oscillations between quiescent and highly dynamic states. The type of intermittency depends on how energy is pumped into the system, and how it is dissipated. While…
The liquid crystalline 11OS5 compound, forming the nematic phase and a few smectic phases, is investigated by broadband dielectric spectroscopy and infra-red spectroscopy. The dielectric relaxation times, ionic conductivity, and positions…
We show theoretically that an initially homogeneous planar Couette flow of a concentrated polymeric fluid is linearly unstable to the growth of two-dimensional (2D) perturbations, within two widely used constitutive models: the…
We study theoretically the closure of a wound in a layer of epithelial cells in a living tissue after damage. Our analysis is informed by our recent experiments observing re-epithelialisation in vivo of Drosophila pupae. On time and…
Achieving controlled and directed motion of artificial nanoscale systems in three-dimensional fluid environments remains a key-challenge in active matter, primarily due to the prevailing thermal fluctuations that rapidly randomize the…
We investigate the dynamics of a dense raft of millimeter-sized granular particles at a vertically vibrated air-water interface, which displays a rich set of patterns and particle dynamics as we vary the vibration amplitude, frequency, and…