软凝聚态物质
In this work, we combine coarse-grained Brownian dynamics simulations and mean-field theory to study supercoiling dynamics, as well as the steady-state profiles of twist and writhe, in an open DNA polymer where one of the free ends is…
In recent years, the concept of kirigami has been used in creating deployable structures for various scientific and technological applications. While high-fidelity Finite Element Analysis (FEA) is the standard for analyzing stress…
Topological defects in systems with liquid-crystalline order are crucial in determining their large-scale properties. In active systems, they are known to have properties impossible at equilibrium: for example, $+1/2$ defects in…
The discovery of the ferroelectric nematic phase has brought with it a plethora of new polar liquid crystalline phases. One in particular is the anti-ferroelectric smectic A SmA\textsubscript{AF} phase. In this letter we show via…
We present a deformable Discrete Element Method (DEM) that extends the classical rigid-particle formulation through a reduced-order description of elastic grain-scale deformation. The method hinges on two developments. First, an energetic…
About forty years ago, it has been predicted that a charged particle, moving parallel to a charged wall in an electrolyte, should experience a lift force that, contrarily to electrostatic forces, is not screened at large distances. Up to…
In the present work, a physiochemically heterogeneous surface has been fabricated to investigate the electrowetting behaviour of the surface. The polystyrene (PS) micro-humps with varied size are developed on the polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS)…
A fundamental challenge in soft material design is the competition between rigidity and dynamicity, as stiffening mechanisms typically suppress energy dissipation. Here, we demonstrate that starch granules serve as instructive scaffolds…
We investigate the phase behaviour of mixtures of two populations of colloidal particles dispersed in a binary solvent system near its critical composition. The surfaces of particles are chemically modified to elicit a specific solvent…
We study phase separation between coexisting active and passive fluids in three-dimensions, using numerical simulation and experiments. Chaotic flows of the active phase drive giant interfacial deformations, causing the co-existing phases…
The process of evolution by natural selection leads to phenotypes of increasing fitness. For cellular chemical reaction networks, this means optimising a variety of fitness functions such as robustness, precision, or sensitivity to external…
To enhance the understanding of the behavior of active nematic, it is important to understand the behavior of topological defects. In this paper, we study the configuration of topological defects of a two-dimensional active nematic around a…
A compact, modular environmental control and solvothermal vapor annealing chamber designed for maintaining a controlled atmosphere with regard to solvent humidity and temperature is presented. The setup allows ex situ and in situ grazing…
Mutually repelling particles form spontaneously ordered clusters when forced into confinement. The clusters may adopt similar spatial arrangements even if the underlying particle interactions are contrastingly different. Here we demonstrate…
We offer new insight into the folding kinematics of degree-4 rigid origami vertices by drawing an analogy to spacetime in special relativity. Specifically, folded states of the vertex, described by pairs of fold angles in terms of cotangent…
Fluidic iontronics offer a unique capability for emulating the chemical processes found in neurons. We extract multiple distinct chemically regulated synaptic features from an experimentally accessible conical microfluidic channel carrying…
The clustering of self-motile and repulsive particles, so-called motility-induced phase separation (MIPS), is one of the clearest signatures of active physics. Typically, increasing the amplitude of self-motility increases the degree of…
Lyotropic liquid crystals can display rich phase behaviour and self-organisation, yet the physical principles underlying their self-assembly into large scale patterns remains understudied. Here, we combine theory, simulations and…
Morphological instabilities of growing tissues that impinge on passive materials are typical of invasive cancers. To explain these instabilities in experiments on breast epithelial spheroids in an extracellular matrix, we develop a…
In recent years the term \textit{active wetting} has gained some traction in works describing, analyzing and modeling a wide variety of wetting phenomena, for instance, in the contexts of biomolecular condensates, of cell layers or cell…