软凝聚态物质
In solution, electrically like-charged particles can experience a strong and long-ranged attraction that leads to the formation of stable, slowly reorganizing clusters. The attractive force underpinning this spontaneous organization process…
Recent advancements in computations have enabled the application of various modeling approaches to predict fracture and failure, such as the gradient-damage (phasefield) method. Several existing studies have leveraged the heat equation…
Contact between fluctuating, fluid-lubricated soft surfaces is prevalent in engineering and biological systems, a process starting with adhesive contact, which can give rise to complex coarsening dynamics. One representation of such a…
We use particle-based simulation to study the rheology of dense suspensions comprising mixtures of small colloids and larger grains, which exhibit shear thinning at low shear rates and shear thickening at high shear rates. By systematically…
Microswimmers and active colloids often move in confined systems, including those involving interfaces. Such interfaces, especially at the microscale, may deform in response to the stresses of the flow created by the active particle. We…
Bacterial colonies growing on surfaces are shaped by mechanical stresses transmitted through the community, governed by the balance between cell growth and steric and cell-substrate interactions. Using overdamped dynamics simulations of…
We investigate the structure and dynamics of a hard colloid-star polymer mixture in the range of its arrested phase separation, where an incipient demixing transition is interfering with a nearby vitrification line, focusing on the protein…
Morphological computing, the use of the physical design of a robot to ease the realization of a given task has been proven to be a relevant concept in the context of swarm robotics. Here we demonstrate both experimentally and numerically,…
Protein phase transitions govern numerous diseases, including neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. In Parkinson's disease, distinct species of the protein alpha-synuclein undergo phase transitions from highly…
We present Rheofluidics, a microfluidic technique that measures the frequency-dependent rheology of individual micron-scale objects. We apply oscillatory hydrodynamic stresses by flowing them through channels with modulated constrictions,…
Cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) self-assemble into cholesteric liquid crystals that produce structural color upon solvent removal. Although most studies examine this process in planar films, confinement within micron-sized water-in-oil…
Janus particles, with their intrinsic asymmetry, are attracting major interest in various applications, including emulsion stabilization, micro/nanomotors, imaging, and drug delivery. In this context, Janus polymersomes are particularly…
Integral equations frequently arise in surface science, and in some cases, they must be treated as inverse problems. In our previous work on optical tweezers, atomic force microscopy, and surface force measurement apparatus, we performed…
The rapid adhesion of motile bacteria from dilute suspensions poses a fundamental non-equilibrium problem: hydrodynamic interactions bias bacterial motion near surfaces without generating stable confinement, while electrostatic interactions…
An elastic arch is an archetypal bistable system. Here, we combine elastica theory and photo-mechanical experiments to elucidate the mechanics of an active arch with a spatio-temporally varying preferred curvature $\overline \kappa(s)$. Our…
Many tools and techniques measure local structure in materials in contexts ranging from biology to geology. We provide a survey of those tools and metrics that are especially useful for analyzing particulate soft matter. The metrics we…
Through evolution, bacteria have developed the ability to perform chemotactic motion in order to find nourishment. By adopting a machine learning approach, we aim to understand how this behavior arises. We consider run-and-tumble agents…
We present the results of an experimental investigation into buoyant rigid spheres rising through highly concentrated collections of hydrated hydrogel particles. The volume fraction of particles is such that the mechanical properties of the…
In the usual segregation scenario for stable inclined chute flows of bidisperse mixtures of fine and coarse spherical particles, coarse particles rise toward the free surface, forming a coarse-rich region atop the flowing pile. Beyond a…
Understanding microstructure in terms of closed-form expressions is an open challenge in nonequilibrium statistical physics. We propose a simple and generic method that combines particle-resolved simulations, deep neural networks and…