Soft Matter最新文献

{"title":"An elastoplastic model approach for the relaxation dynamics of active glasses.","authors":"Tanmoy Ghosh, Peter Sollich, Saroj Kumar Nandi","doi":"10.1039/d4sm01394h","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1039/d4sm01394h","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>How activity affects the glassy dynamics is crucial for several biological processes. Furthermore, active glasses offer fascinating phenomenologies, extend the scope of equilibrium glass-forming liquids, and can provide novel insights into the original problem. We introduce a family of novel approaches to investigating the relaxation dynamics of active glasses <i>via</i> an active elastoplastic model (EPM). These approaches describe the relaxation dynamics <i>via</i> local plastic yielding and can provide improved insights as we can study various aspects of the system separately. Activity enters the model <i>via</i> three crucial features: activity-mediated plastic yielding, activated barrier crossing, and persistent rotational dynamics of the yielding direction. We first consider a minimal active EPM that adds the effect of active yielding to a thermal EPM. We show that this active EPM captures the known results of active glasses within a reasonable parameter space. The results also agree well with the analytical results for active glasses when activity is small. The minimal model breaks down at very low temperatures where other effects become important. Looking at the broader model class, we demonstrate that whereas active yielding primarily dominates the relaxation dynamics, the persistence of the yielding direction governs the dynamic heterogeneity in active glasses.</p>","PeriodicalId":103,"journal":{"name":"Soft Matter","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143750386","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}

{"title":"Narrow escape for active camphor particles: facilitated escape and aging.","authors":"Raúl Salgado-García, Orlando Díaz-Hernández, Andrés Castañeda-Jonapá, Gustavo Morales-Padrón, Alberto Estudillo, Thomas Buhse, José-Manuel Cruz","doi":"10.1039/d4sm01483a","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1039/d4sm01483a","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In this work, we experimentally investigate the narrow escape problem using self-propelled camphor-infused discs, which have the possibility to escape from a bounded circular domain through an opening in the boundary. To analyze the statistical properties of the escape problem, we proposed two experimental protocols: first, a control setup within a closed circular domain where the disc encounters a target simulating an opening on the boundary, and a second setup where a real opening is placed on the boundary of the circular domain. These two setups allow us to compare how the statistical properties of escape differ between simulated (or fictitious) escape and the actual escape of camphor particles. Our results suggest that the presence of an actual opening in the wall alters the interactions between the particle and the boundary. Notably, we observe the counterintuitive phenomenon that introducing a real door in the boundary makes less accessible the escape from the domain. We further contrast and analyze several qualitative and quantitative properties of the system, including chiral flips, bouncing behavior, arrival angle distribution, as well as first passage time and exit time distributions, among other dynamical properties.</p>","PeriodicalId":103,"journal":{"name":"Soft Matter","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143750038","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}

{"title":"How does a polymer glass resist fatigue crack growth?","authors":"Christine Heera Ahn, Zheqi Chen, Xianyang Bao, Zhigang Suo","doi":"10.1039/d4sm01521e","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1039/d4sm01521e","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>We investigate fatigue crack growth in a polymer glass in which polymer chains are long and not crosslinked. Atoms bind by forces of two types: covalent bonds between repeat units along a chain, which resist chain scission, and noncovalent interactions between the chains, which resist chain slip. The covalent bonds are much stronger than the noncovalent interactions. When a crack impinges on a long chain, the chain slips and transmits tension over a segment of the chain. When the chain breaks at a single covalent bond, the energy stored in the segment dissipates. This molecular picture suggests a hypothesis: the fatigue threshold increases as the yield strength decreases. We analyze this hypothesis by developing a shear-lag model. We test the hypothesis by using high-molecular-weight poly(methyl methacrylate), and by modifying noncovalent interactions with plasticizers.</p>","PeriodicalId":103,"journal":{"name":"Soft Matter","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143750105","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}

{"title":"Single-lipid tracking reveals heterogeneities in the nanoscale dynamics of colloid-supported lipid bilayers.","authors":"Levena Gascoigne, Roderick P Tas, Pepijn G Moerman, Ilja K Voets","doi":"10.1039/d4sm01299b","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1039/d4sm01299b","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In this work, we utilize single-particle tracking photoactivated localization microscopy (sptPALM) to explore lipid dynamics in colloid-supported lipid bilayers (CSLBs) with liquid-like (DOPC), gel-like (DPPC), and phase-separated (DOPC:DPPC:cholesterol) membranes. Using total internal reflection fluorescence illumination, we tracked photoactivatable fluorescent dyes conjugated to lipids within these membranes. Analysis of tracked lipids revealed that bilayers across all compositions have heterogeneous dynamics, with lipid mobility varying over three orders of magnitude. We leveraged the temperature-dependent phase behavior of DPPC to transform gel-like membranes at room temperature into liquid-like membranes above 41 °C, which resulted in increased diffusivity and a surprising decrease in heterogeneity. Finally, we perform single lipid tracking in fluid-rich phases within gel-phase regions to demonstrate their dynamics with reduced lipid mobility because of soft confinement within phase-separated microdomains. Our findings have implications for colloidal assembly strategies that exploit ligand mobility to create controlled and reproducible colloidal superstructures.</p>","PeriodicalId":103,"journal":{"name":"Soft Matter","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143750173","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}

{"title":"Functional assessment of migration and adhesion to quantify cancer cell aggression.","authors":"Lauren E Mehanna, James D Boyd, Chloe G Walker, Adrianna R Osborne, Martha E Grady, Brad J Berron","doi":"10.1039/d4sm01351d","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1039/d4sm01351d","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>During epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT), cancer cells lose their cell-cell adhesion junctions as they become more metastatic, altering cell motility and focal adhesion disassembly associated with increased detachment from the primary tumor and a migratory response into nearby tissue and vasculature. Current <i>in vitro</i> strategies characterizing a cell's metastatic potential heavily favor quantifying the presence of cell adhesion biomarkers through biochemical analysis; however, mechanical cues such as adhesion and motility directly relate to cell metastatic potential without needing to first identify a cell specific biomarker for a particular type of cancer. This paper presents a comprehensive comparison of two functional metrics of cancer aggression, wound closure migration velocity and cell detachment from a culture surface, for three pairs of epithelial cancer cell lines (breast, endometrium, tongue tissue origins). It was found that one functional metric alone was not sufficient to categorize the cancer cell lines; instead, both metrics were necessary to identify functional trends and accurately place cells on the spectrum of metastasis. On average, cell lines with low metastatic potential (MCF-7, Ishikawa, and Cal-27) were more aggressive through wound closure migration compared to loss of cell adhesion. On the other hand, cell lines with high metastatic potential (MDA-MB-231, KLE, and SCC-25) were on average more aggressive through loss of cell adhesion compared to wound closure migration. This trend was true independent of the tissue type where the cells originated, indicating that there is a relationship between metastatic potential and the predominate type of cancer aggression. Our work presents one of the first combined studies relating cell metastatic potential to functional migration and adhesion metrics across cancer cell lines from selected tissue origins, without needing to identify tissue-specific biomarkers to achieve success. Using functional metrics provides powerful clinical relevancy for future predictive tools of cancer metastasis.</p>","PeriodicalId":103,"journal":{"name":"Soft Matter","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-03-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143727259","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}

{"title":"Microneedle arrays coated with Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus DNA vaccine <i>via</i> electrospray deposition.","authors":"Sarah H Park, Isha R Shah, Nandita C Jhumur, Yaxin Mo, Shalaka Tendolkar, Emran O Lallow, Jerry W Shan, Jeffrey D Zahn, Joel N Maslow, Assimina A Pelegri, Hao Lin, David I Shreiber, Jonathan P Singer","doi":"10.1039/d4sm01322k","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1039/d4sm01322k","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Microneedle arrays have been shown to be a minimally invasive method of transdermal drug delivery. However, methods to coat these arrays often require a reservoir of the active ingredient, leading to unused and wasted material. Electrospray deposition is a targeted coating method that offers a competitive alternative for coating microneedles. By architecting the charge landscape of the setup, this technology can achieve coating deposition efficiencies nearing 100%, with little to no material wasted during the coating process. A Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus DNA vaccine was used as the model material to assess deposition efficiency as well as the efficacy of fragile biological materials subjected to electrospray deposition. Trehalose and polystyrene-<i>block</i>-polyacrylic acid were used as excipients to encourage coating dispersion. These coatings were inserted into Sprague Dawley rats where the antigen was subsequently detected and located using immunohistochemistry. Both coatings, with and without excipients, showed that protein expression is achieved after the vaccine is subjected to electrospray, however, the presence of excipients qualitatively leads to a more disperse diffusion profile. Further, this work demonstrates the capability of electrospray deposition as a highly efficient method to coat microneedles for transdermal drug delivery.</p>","PeriodicalId":103,"journal":{"name":"Soft Matter","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-03-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143727266","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}

{"title":"\"Magnetic marshmallows\" for soft robotics: magneto-mechanical characterization and application in switchable adhesion structures.","authors":"Maxime Bès, Samuel Lamont, Azadeh Dufour-Lamartinie, Jean-Claude Mancer, Ludovic Olanier, Jérôme Robert, Franck Vernerey, Artem Kovalenko","doi":"10.1039/d4sm01503g","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1039/d4sm01503g","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Soft magnetic composites exhibit fast and programmable macroscopic deformations in magnetic fields, making them promising for applications in soft untethered robotics or in designing surfaces with switchable adhesion or wetting properties. However, due to the incompressible nature of soft, non-porous actuators, their compression or elongation leads to important shape change due to lateral expansion or compression, respectively. In practice, bending and folding remain preferred actuation modes. Here, we explore the potential of magnetic elastomer \"marshmallows\" as compressible actuators with low Poisson's ratio. Using a sacrificial salt pellet template method, we fabricate polydimethylsiloxane foams with open porosity filled with carbonyl iron particles. The obtained foams exhibit strong reversible compression under the influence of a magnetic field gradient. We reveal the significance of stress accumulation in the direction of the field gradient due to magnetic body forces and the key role of the foam thickness in magnetic strain. We propose a simple analytical model based on the action of a magnetic body force that explains these effects. Finally, we demonstrate the development of a novel switchable adhesion structure, in which the magnetic foam covered with a pressure-sensitive adhesive serves as a compressible actuator able to switch between adhesive and non-adhesive states.</p>","PeriodicalId":103,"journal":{"name":"Soft Matter","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-03-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143727254","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}

{"title":"Kovacs-like memory effect in a sheared colloidal glass: role of non-affine flows.","authors":"Maitri Mandal, Abhishek Ghadai, Rituparno Mandal, Sayantan Majumdar","doi":"10.1039/d4sm01514b","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1039/d4sm01514b","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Memory effect reflects a system's ability to encode, retain and retrieve information about its past. Such effects are essentially an out-of-equilibrium phenomenon providing insight into the complex structural and dynamical behavior of the system. Kovacs effect is one such memory effect that is traditionally associated with thermal history. Although studies on the Kovacs-like memory effect have been extended to mechanical perturbations such as compression-decompression, whether such effects can also be observed under volume-conserving perturbations like shear, remains unclear. Combining experiments, simulations and linear response theory we demonstrate Kovacs-like memory effect in a sheared colloidal glass. Moreover, we explore the influence of non-linear perturbations and establish a correlation between the deviation from linear response prediction and microscopic non-affine flows generated due to such large deformations in affecting the memory effect. Our study not only extends Kovacs-like memory effect in the domain of volume-conserving mechanical perturbations, it also highlights the importance of the nature of underlying microscopic flows in controlling the bulk stress relaxation, affecting the Kovacs-like memory effect in amorphous materials.</p>","PeriodicalId":103,"journal":{"name":"Soft Matter","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-03-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143727265","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}

{"title":"Recent advances in nanoprecipitation: from mechanistic insights to applications in nanomaterial synthesis.","authors":"Muzammil Kuddushi, Chiranjeevi Kanike, Ben Bin Xu, Xuehua Zhang","doi":"10.1039/d5sm00006h","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1039/d5sm00006h","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Nanoprecipitation is a versatile, low-energy technique for synthesizing nanomaterials through controlled precipitation, enabling precise tuning of material properties. This review offers a comprehensive and up-to-date perspective on nanoprecipitation, focusing on its role in nanoparticle synthesis and its adaptability in designing diverse nanostructures. The review begins with the foundational principles of nanoprecipitation, emphasizing the impact of key parameters such as flow rate, mixing approach, injection rate, and Reynolds number on nanomaterial characteristics. It also discusses the influence of physicochemical factors, including solvent choice, polymer type, and drug properties. Various nanoprecipitation configurations-batch, flash, and microfluidic are examined for their specific advantages in controlling particle size, morphology, and internal structure. The review further explores the potential of nanoprecipitation to create complex nanostructures, such as core-shell particles, Janus nanoparticles, and porous and semiconducting polymer nanoparticles. Applications in biomedicine and other fields highlight nanoprecipitation's promise as a sustainable and tunable method for fabricating advanced nanomaterials. Finally, the review identifies future directions, including scaling microfluidic techniques, expanding compatibility with hydrophilic compounds, and integrating machine learning to further enhance the development of nanoprecipitation.</p>","PeriodicalId":103,"journal":{"name":"Soft Matter","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-03-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143727270","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}

{"title":"Electric field-induced control of protein crystal morphology.","authors":"Debes Ray, Mahnoush Madani, Jan K G Dhont, Florian Platten, Kyongok Kang","doi":"10.1039/d5sm00181a","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1039/d5sm00181a","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In a previous study (D. Ray, <i>et al</i>., <i>J. Phys. Chem. Lett.</i>, 2024, <b>15</b>, 8108-8113), we found that an alternating electric field considerably affects the location of the crystallization boundary and the liquid-liquid phase separation line as well as crystallization kinetics in lysozyme solutions containing sodium thiocyanate (NaSCN). The present study extends this work by investigating the influence of the same electric field on the microscopic appearance of lysozyme crystals as they form from a supersaturated solution. We observe a variety of distinct crystal morphologies, which we classify as single- and multi-arm crystals, flower-like crystal structures, whiskers, and sea-urchin crystals. Crystal morphologies exhibit significant variations with changes in protein and salt concentrations, and the electric field strongly alters the morphology-state diagram in the protein-versus-salt concentration plane. This alteration is likely due to the field effect on protein-protein interactions. We believe the effect is mediated by the field-enhanced adsorption of SCN^- ions to the surface of lysozyme, ultimately driving the observed changes in crystallization behavior. These findings offer insights into how electric fields can be used to control crystal formation and morphology in protein systems.</p>","PeriodicalId":103,"journal":{"name":"Soft Matter","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-03-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143727258","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}