Soft MatterPub Date : 2025-06-03DOI: 10.1039/D5SM00152H
Riham Muzaffar-Kawasma, Elisheva Michman, Meirav Oded and Roy Shenhar
{"title":"Directed self-organization of block copolymer micelles on topographic substrates†","authors":"Riham Muzaffar-Kawasma, Elisheva Michman, Meirav Oded and Roy Shenhar","doi":"10.1039/D5SM00152H","DOIUrl":"10.1039/D5SM00152H","url":null,"abstract":"<p >The ability to create complex arrays of organized nanostructures is crucial for many advanced technological applications. An extensively investigated methodology for producing such arrays is the directed self-assembly of block copolymers using topographically patterned substrates, where micron-scale features engraved in the substrate induce nanodomain alignment over macroscopic ranges. Most research thus far concentrated on the formation of ordered surface patterns through microphase separation of block copolymers in thin films. In this work, we demonstrate the utility of block copolymer micelles – soft, self-assembled, non-crosslinked entities – for the preparation of arrays with structural bi-modality. Systematic investigation of the influence of the substrate's topography on the micellar assembly at different concentrations revealed different structural behavior of micelles deposited on the plateaus and in the trenches, which is tunable by the topographic feature dimensions. The potential of this approach for effecting complex superstructures is demonstrated by employing the micelles to organize semiconductor nanorods.</p>","PeriodicalId":103,"journal":{"name":"Soft Matter","volume":" 24","pages":" 4935-4944"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-06-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlepdf/2025/sm/d5sm00152h?page=search","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144207239","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"化学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Soft MatterPub Date : 2025-06-03DOI: 10.1039/D4SM01343C
Elizabeth M. Engle, Sydney Yang, Allison Boboltz, Sahana Kumar, Alexa Stern and Gregg A. Duncan
{"title":"Microrheology of gel-forming airway mucins isolated from porcine trachea†","authors":"Elizabeth M. Engle, Sydney Yang, Allison Boboltz, Sahana Kumar, Alexa Stern and Gregg A. Duncan","doi":"10.1039/D4SM01343C","DOIUrl":"10.1039/D4SM01343C","url":null,"abstract":"<p >Mucus produced in the lungs has important protective barrier functions that strongly depend on its biomolecular composition, biopolymer network architecture, and viscoelastic properties. However, to date, there has yet to be a readily available source of reconstituted, gel-forming mucins from the lungs to model and study its biophysical properties. To address this, we established an in-house procedure to extract airway mucins from pig trachea with minimal DNA contamination consisting of ∼70% by weight protein. Particle tracking microrheology was used to evaluate the biophysical properties of porcine trachea mucins for comparison to other reconstituted mucin and native mucus gels. At an ionic strength and pH reflective of conditions in the lungs, we found that porcine tracheal mucins formed a tighter mesh network and possessed a significantly greater microviscosity compared to mucins extracted from the porcine small intestine. In comparison to mucus harvested from human airway tissue cultures, we found that porcine tracheal mucins also possessed a greater microviscosity, suggesting that these mucins can form into a gel at physiological total solid concentrations.</p>","PeriodicalId":103,"journal":{"name":"Soft Matter","volume":" 25","pages":" 4999-5004"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-06-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12152714/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144264903","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"化学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Soft MatterPub Date : 2025-06-03DOI: 10.1039/D5SM00221D
Zohreh Farmani, Jing Wang, Ralf Stannarius and Joshua A. Dijksman
{"title":"Capillary-induced adhesive contact dynamics determines dissipation and flow structure in wetted hydrogel packings","authors":"Zohreh Farmani, Jing Wang, Ralf Stannarius and Joshua A. Dijksman","doi":"10.1039/D5SM00221D","DOIUrl":"10.1039/D5SM00221D","url":null,"abstract":"<p >The bulk response of a granular material is strongly influenced by particle and contact properties, such as friction coefficients, particle softness, lubrication on the contact scale and adhesion between particles. This study explores the bulk flow of wetted hydrogel particles, which are soft but also weakly adhesive due to capillary bridges. This simplified granular material with minimal contact friction reveals key insights in the role of capillary stresses on the macroscopic flow. At the micro-scale, we demonstrate a direct correlation between relative humidity (RH) and liquid bridge size between two wetted hydrogel spheres, with an average rupture distance increasing with humidity. On the macro scale, the wetted hydrogel sphere packings show remarkable flow dissipation and flow behavior in the split-bottom shear cell. We retrieve flow fields of the hydrogel packing with magnetic resonance imaging and measure flow resistance with a rheometric technique. The shear bands for the adhesive hydrogels are much narrower than for dry grain flows. The change in flow resistance due to a change in filling height can be interpreted with a minimization argument, indicating that the flow dissipation is set entirely by the capillary bridge stress: the capillary stress at all filling heights dominates the gravitational stress. We confirm this view by exposing the flowing packing to an external pressure. Beyond a confining stress of 250 Pa, the shear bands become significantly thinner, approaching some plateau at 360 Pa. This underscores the importance of understanding micro-scale interactions in controlling macroscopic hydrogel particle packing behavior.</p>","PeriodicalId":103,"journal":{"name":"Soft Matter","volume":" 27","pages":" 5468-5479"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-06-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlepdf/2025/sm/d5sm00221d?page=search","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144309227","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"化学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Soft MatterPub Date : 2025-06-03DOI: 10.1039/D5SM00335K
Bishnu R., Rabibrata Mukherjee, Nandini Bhandaru and Arnab Dutta
{"title":"Morphology prediction for polymer blend thin films using machine learning†","authors":"Bishnu R., Rabibrata Mukherjee, Nandini Bhandaru and Arnab Dutta","doi":"10.1039/D5SM00335K","DOIUrl":"10.1039/D5SM00335K","url":null,"abstract":"<p >When two immiscible polymers are spin-coated from a common solvent, they undergo phase separation, resulting in a mesoscale morphology that depends on a host of parameters. The phase-separated morphology plays a pivotal role in determining the potential applications of blend thin films. As a guide to experimentalists, a machine learning-based classification framework is proposed that can predict the morphology of PS/PMMA blend thin films. Different experimental parameters like weight fraction of PS, molecular weight of PMMA, concentration, and substrate surface energy were used as inputs based on which the morphology type, <em>i.e.</em>, column, hole, or island, was predicted using a multi-class classification model. Several machine learning algorithms were used to develop the proposed classifier. Support vector machine (SVM) algorithm resulted in the highest accuracy of 93.75%. An explainable machine learning algorithm was also implemented to extract valuable insights from the proposed SVM model. These insights were found to be in excellent agreement with experimental observations, thus not only enhancing the reliability of the predictive model but also the understanding of phase separation in PS/PMMA blends. Based on these insights, several guidelines are recommended to further aid in the experimental design of specific morphologies. An easy-to-use web tool is also developed so that the proposed model can be accessed freely, which is expected to expedite the design of application-specific thin films.</p>","PeriodicalId":103,"journal":{"name":"Soft Matter","volume":" 26","pages":" 5284-5295"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-06-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlepdf/2025/sm/d5sm00335k?page=search","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144245327","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"化学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Soft MatterPub Date : 2025-06-03DOI: 10.1039/D5SM00245A
Sebastian Fehlinger, Kai Cui, Arooj Sajjad, Heinz Koeppl and Benno Liebchen
{"title":"Fluctuation induced network patterns in active matter with spatially correlated noise†","authors":"Sebastian Fehlinger, Kai Cui, Arooj Sajjad, Heinz Koeppl and Benno Liebchen","doi":"10.1039/D5SM00245A","DOIUrl":"10.1039/D5SM00245A","url":null,"abstract":"<p >Fluctuations play a central role in many fields of physics, from quantum electrodynamics to statistical mechanics. In active matter physics, most models focus on thermal fluctuations due to a surrounding solvent. An alternative but much less explored noise source can occur due to fluctuating external fields, which typically feature certain spatial correlations. In this work, we introduce a minimal model to explore the influence of spatially correlated but temporally uncorrelated noise on the collective behaviour of active particles. We find that specifically in chiral active particles such fluctuations induce the formation of network patterns, which neither occur for spatially (uncorrelated) thermal noise, nor in the complete absence of fluctuations. These networks show (i) a percolated structure, (ii) local alignment of the contained particles, but no global alignment, and (iii) hardly coarsen. We perform a topological data analysis to systematically characterize the topology of the network patterns. Our work serves as a starting point to explore the role of spatially correlated fluctuations and presents a route towards noise-induced phenomena in active matter.</p>","PeriodicalId":103,"journal":{"name":"Soft Matter","volume":" 27","pages":" 5459-5467"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-06-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144289363","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"化学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Soft MatterPub Date : 2025-06-02DOI: 10.1039/D5SM00379B
Salvatore Torquato and Jaeuk Kim
{"title":"Existence of nonequilibrium glasses in the degenerate stealthy hyperuniform ground-state manifold","authors":"Salvatore Torquato and Jaeuk Kim","doi":"10.1039/D5SM00379B","DOIUrl":"10.1039/D5SM00379B","url":null,"abstract":"<p >Stealthy interactions are an emerging class of nontrivial, bounded long-ranged oscillatory pair potentials with classical ground states that can be disordered, hyperuniform, and infinitely degenerate. Their hybrid crystal-liquid nature endows them with novel physical properties with advantages over their crystalline counterparts. Here, we show the existence of nonequilibrium hard-sphere glasses within this unusual ground-state manifold as the stealthiness parameter <em>χ</em> tends to zero that are remarkably configurationally extremely close to hyperuniform 3D maximally random jammed (MRJ) sphere packings. The latter are prototypical glasses since they are maximally disordered, perfectly rigid, and perfectly nonergodic. Our optimization procedure, which leverages the maximum cardinality of the infinite ground-state set, not only guarantees that our packings are hyperuniform with the same structure-factor scaling exponent as the MRJ state, but they share other salient structural attributes, including a packing fraction of 0.638, a mean contact number per particle of 6, gap exponent of 0.44(1), and pair correlation functions <em>g</em><small><sub>2</sub></small>(<em>r</em>) and structures factors <em>S</em>(<em>k</em>) that are virtually identical to one another for all <em>r</em> and <em>k</em>, respectively. Moreover, we demonstrate that stealthy hyperuniform packings can be created within the disordered regime (0 < <em>χ</em> < 1/2) with heretofore unattained maximal packing fractions. As <em>χ</em> increases from zero, the particles in this family of disordered packings always form interparticle contacts, albeit with sparser contact networks as <em>χ</em> increases from zero, resulting in linear polymer-like chains of contacting particles with increasingly shorter chain lengths. The capacity to generate ultradense stealthy hyperuniform packings for all <em>χ</em> opens up new materials applications in optics and acoustics.</p>","PeriodicalId":103,"journal":{"name":"Soft Matter","volume":" 24","pages":" 4898-4907"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlepdf/2025/sm/d5sm00379b?page=search","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144197827","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"化学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Soft MatterPub Date : 2025-06-02DOI: 10.1039/D5SM00123D
Anne George, Kingshuk Bag and Narayanaswamy Jayaraman
{"title":"Aromatic–carbohydrate amphiphiles and self-assembly into supramolecular glycostructures","authors":"Anne George, Kingshuk Bag and Narayanaswamy Jayaraman","doi":"10.1039/D5SM00123D","DOIUrl":"10.1039/D5SM00123D","url":null,"abstract":"<p >Carbohydrate-conjugated aromatic glycostructures, constituted with a diverse set of carbohydrate and aromatic moieties, possess a strong tendency to self-assemble in aqueous solutions under appropriate conditions. The self-assembly of such aromatic–carbohydrate amphiphiles is driven primarily by π-stacking, which envelops the aromatic moieties and hydrogen bonding interactions between the carbohydrate moieties. The self-assembled structures possessing multiple copies of carbohydrates on their surface mimic multivalent presentations, relevant to high avidity lectin binding, applications in drug delivery, cell imaging and more. This review focuses on the advantages of using self-assembly of carbohydrate-based aromatic amphiphiles in a bottom-up approach to generate diverse supramolecular glycostructures, possessing molecular and supramolecular chiralities. Advantages of this approach are the use of well-defined and low molecular weight building blocks to generate supramolecular structures with tunable properties, as well as the development of stimuli-responsive glycomaterials.</p>","PeriodicalId":103,"journal":{"name":"Soft Matter","volume":" 26","pages":" 5173-5187"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144309226","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"化学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Soft MatterPub Date : 2025-06-02DOI: 10.1039/d5sm00251f
Andrea Ninarello, Emanuela Zaccarelli
{"title":"Hyper-auxeticity and the volume phase transition of polymer gels.","authors":"Andrea Ninarello, Emanuela Zaccarelli","doi":"10.1039/d5sm00251f","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1039/d5sm00251f","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Thermoresponsive hydrogels exhibit reversible deswelling at the volume phase transition (VPT), associated to a minimum of the Poisson's ratio <i>ν</i>. Recent numerical investigations uncovered the occurrence of a hyper-auxetic transition (HAT) (<i>ν</i> = -1) for low-crosslinked hydrogels at low temperature, accompanied by a critical-like behavior. Here, we perform extensive numerical simulations to unveil the relation between these two transitions. We find that the HAT occurs at different temperatures <i>T</i> up to a maximum value of the crosslinker concentration <i>c</i>, thus being clearly distinct from the VPT, taking place at fixed <i>T</i> for all values of <i>c</i>. Our results provide novel fundamental insights on the interplay between network collapse and mechanical properties of these fascinating materials.</p>","PeriodicalId":103,"journal":{"name":"Soft Matter","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144197828","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"化学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Soft MatterPub Date : 2025-05-31DOI: 10.1039/D5SM00261C
Fengxiang Zhou, Minyue Lu and Lingxiang Jiang
{"title":"Thermodynamic anatomy of micelle-small molecule coacervation†","authors":"Fengxiang Zhou, Minyue Lu and Lingxiang Jiang","doi":"10.1039/D5SM00261C","DOIUrl":"10.1039/D5SM00261C","url":null,"abstract":"<p >Although polymer-based coacervates have long been a research focus, their large molecular weight and sluggish response to external stimuli motivate the study of simpler micelle-small molecule systems. Here, we use coarse-grained simulations with umbrella sampling—explicitly incorporating solvent water—to investigate the coacervation of a charged amphiphile and a multivalent countercharged compound, elucidating both the kinetic pathways and thermodynamic driving forces. Our results show that coacervation proceeds through initial pairing of multivalent ions with self-assembled amphiphile micelles, followed by Brownian motion-driven coalescence—rather than by Ostwald ripening, the dominant growth mechanism in traditional micellization systems with monovalent counterions. Both stages are primarily governed by entropy rather than enthalpy. This entropy gain arises from the release of counterions and their hydration shells, as well as from the dehydration of the coacervate complex, marked by the contact of the first water shell. The consequent reduction in ion–solvent interactions incurs unfavorable ion–dipole contributions to the overall enthalpy. In highlighting water's critical role, our findings shed light on how molecular details govern phase behavior and physical properties in micelle-small molecule coacervate systems.</p>","PeriodicalId":103,"journal":{"name":"Soft Matter","volume":" 25","pages":" 5067-5079"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-05-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144223788","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"化学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Soft MatterPub Date : 2025-05-30DOI: 10.1039/D5SM00332F
Samuel Martin and Marcia A. Cooper
{"title":"Interaction of grain morphology and intergranular friction on grain packing†","authors":"Samuel Martin and Marcia A. Cooper","doi":"10.1039/D5SM00332F","DOIUrl":"10.1039/D5SM00332F","url":null,"abstract":"<p >The bulk density of loosely packed grains is determined by grain morphology and the intergranular friction coefficient. Creating simulated grain packings with realistic packing densities is the first step in performing predictions of granular material behavior at higher compaction stresses. Our novel approach performs jamming simulations at near-zero pressure where the surface properties are decoupled from the elastic properties to explore the interaction between grain morphology and intergranular friction. We use bonded particle model (BPM) grain representations with different subparticle resolutions to vary their morphological properties. Our investigation uses both regular- and irregular-shaped BPM grains to develop a relationship between grain morphology, intergranular friction, and the jamming limit that applies to simulated and physical grains. The relationship prescribes a friction coefficient for use in simulations of grain packing that considers the effect of morphology.</p>","PeriodicalId":103,"journal":{"name":"Soft Matter","volume":" 26","pages":" 5214-5230"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-05-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlepdf/2025/sm/d5sm00332f?page=search","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144214339","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"化学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}