相关论文: Defect-driven shape transitions in elastic active …

Liquid shells (e.g. double emulsions, vesicles etc.) are susceptible to interfacial instability and rupturing when driven out of mechanical equilibrium. This poses a significant challenge for the design of liquid shell based micro-machines,…

Aquatic creatures exhibit remarkable adaptations of their body to efficiently interact with the surrounding fluid. The tight coupling between their morphology, motion, and the environment are highly complex but serves as a valuable example…

The transition from a nematic to an isotropic state in a self-closing spherical liquid crystal shell with tangential alignment is a stimulating phenomenon to investigate, as the topology dictates that the shell exhibits local isotropic…

Biological tissues exhibit diverse mechanical and rheological behaviors during morphogenesis. While much is known about tissue phase transitions controlled by structural order and cell mechanics, key questions regarding how tissue-scale…

Starting from a three-dimensional description of an active nematic layer, we employ an asymptotic theory to derive a series of low-dimensional continuum models that capture the coupled dynamics of flat and curved films, including variations…

We develop a description of defect loops in three-dimensional active nematics based on a multipole expansion of the far-field director and show how this leads to a self-dynamics dependent on the loop's geometric type. The dipole term leads…

A body immersed in a nematic liquid crystal disturbs the fluid's preferred molecular configuration and increases its stored elastic energy. In an active nematic, the fluid components also generate a stress in the bulk fluid. By introducing…

Defects, and in particular topological defects, are architectural motifs that play a crucial role in natural materials. Here we provide a systematic strategy to introduce such defects in mechanical metamaterials. We first present…

We report on the emergence of stable self-propelled bound defects in monolayers of active nematics, which form virtual full-integer topological defects in the form of vortices and asters. Through numerical simulations and analytical…

Epithelial tissues play a fundamental role in various morphogenetic events during development and early embryogenesis. Although epithelial monolayers are often modeled as two-dimensional (2D) elastic surfaces, they distinguish themselves…

Models for fluid deformable surfaces provide valid theories to describe the dynamics of thin fluidic sheets of soft materials. To use such models in morphogenesis and development requires to incorporate active forces. We consider active…

We derive and numerically solve a surface active nematodynamics model. We validate the numerical approach on a sphere and analyse the influence of hydrodynamics on the oscillatory motion of topological defects. For ellipsoidal surfaces the…

We investigate the effect of an anisotropic substrate on the turbulent dynamics of a simulated two dimensional active nematic. This is introduced as an anisotropic friction and an effective anisotropic viscosity, with the orientation of the…

We explore a novel strategy of patterning nematic elastomers that does not require inscribing the texture directly. It is based on varying the dopant concentration that, beside shifting the phase transition point, affects the nematic…

Cultured stem cells have become a standard platform not only for regenerative medicine and developmental biology but also for biophysical studies. Yet, the characterization of cultured stem cells at the level of morphology and macroscopic…

Active solids such as cell collectives, colloidal clusters, and active metamaterials exhibit diverse collective phenomena, ranging from rigid body motion to shape-changing mechanisms. The nonlinear dynamics of such active materials remains…

Animal morphogenesis often involves significant shape changes of epithelial tissue sheets. Great progress has been made in understanding the underlying cellular driving forces and their coordination through biomechanical feedback loops.…

Mechanical metamaterials are periodic lattice structures with complex unit cell architectures that can achieve extraordinary mechanical properties beyond the capability of bulk materials. A new class of metamaterials is proposed, whose…

We describe the flows and morphological dynamics of topological defect lines and loops in three-dimensional active nematics and show, using theory and numerical modelling, that they are governed by the local profile of the orientational…

Nematic elastomers and glasses are solids that display spontaneous distortion under external stimuli. Recent advances in the synthesis of sheets with controlled heterogeneities have enabled their actuation into non-trivial shapes with…