相关论文: Cavitation controls droplet sizes in elastic media
During organismal development, biochemical reaction networks sense and respond to mechanical forces to coordinate embryonic patterning with embryo morphogenesis. Factors such as cortical tension, cell density, and matrix mechanical…
Biomolecular condensates play a central role in the spatial organization of living matter. Their formation is now well understood as a form of liquid-liquid phase separation that occurs very far from equilibrium. For instance, they can be…
In this work, we present experiments and simulations on the nucleation and successive dynamics of laser-induced bubbles inside liquid droplets in free-fall motion, i.e. a case with a free boundary in all directions. The droplets of a…
We study the dynamics of proliferating cell collectives whose microscopic constituents' growth is inhibited by macroscopic growth-induced stress. Discrete particle simulations of a growing collective show the emergence of concentric-ring…
Phase separating systems that are maintained away from thermodynamic equilibrium via molecular processes represent a class of active systems, which we call active emulsions. These systems are driven by external energy input for example…
Giant unilamellar vesicles (GUVs) composed of as few as three lipid species can phase separate into small-scale lipid domains with stripes and dots patterns. These patterns have been experimentally characterized in terms of how their size…
An important strategy to stabilize emulsions is to arrest coalescence of the constituent droplets with an opposing rheological force. Colloidal particles adsorbed on the surface of emulsion droplets in a Pickering emulsion become…
Phase separation is the thermodynamic process that explains how droplets form in multicomponent fluids. These droplets can provide controlled compartments to localize chemical reactions, and reactions can also affect the droplets' dynamics.…
How condensed-matter simulations depend on the number of molecules being simulated ($N$) is sometimes itself a valuable piece of information. Liquid crystals provide a case in point. Light scattering and $2d$-IR experiments on…
Biological cells exhibit a hierarchical spatial organization, where various compartments harbor condensates that form by phase separation. Cells can control the emergence of these condensates by affecting compartment size, the amount of the…
Droplets confined in a microfluidic channel often exhibit intriguing shapes, primarily attributable to complex hydrodynamic interactions over small scales. We show that effect of varied substrate wettability conditions may further…
While evaporating solvent is a widely used technique to assemble nano-sized objects into desired superstructures, there has been limited work on how the assembled structures are affected by the physical aspects of the process. We present…
We report an experimental investigation of the spontaneous motion of liquid droplets on soft gels with a crosslinking gradient. By systematically adjusting the spatial difference in crosslinking density, we observed that millimeter-sized…
Recent experimental and theoretical studies suggest that crystallization and glass-like solidification are useful analogies for understanding cell ordering in confluent biological tissues. It remains unexplored how cellular ordering…
Water can exist in a metastable liquid state under tension for long times before the system relaxes into the vapor via cavitation, i.e., bubble nucleation. Microscopic information on the cavitation process can be extracted from experimental…
Numerous cell-types have shown a remarkable ability to detect and move along gradients in stiffness of an underlying substrate -- a process known as durotaxis. The mechanisms underlying durotaxis are still unresolved, but generally believed…
How multicellular life forms evolved out from unicellular ones constitutes a major problem in our understanding of the evolution of our biosphere. A recent set of experiments involving yeast cell populations has shown that selection for…
Cell migration is closely linked to cell shape, yet cell size is often assumed to remain constant. This assumption is challenged by recent experiments showing that cells undergo volume loss during spreading and swelling upon activation,…
A filament of liquid is usually unstable and breaks up into small droplets, while a filament of polymer solution is known to be quite stable against such instability, and they form a stable configuration of filament connecting two spherical…
Various microphysical models attempt to explain the occurrence of broad droplet size distributions (DSD) in clouds through approximate representations of the stochastic droplet growth by condensation in a turbulent environment. This work…