Soft materials articles within Nature Physics

Featured

  • Article |

    As amorphous solids, glasses and gels are similar, but the origins of their different elastic properties are unclear. Simulations now suggest differing free-energy-minimizing pathways: structural ordering for glasses and interface reduction for gels.

    • Yinqiao Wang
    • , Michio Tateno
    •  & Hajime Tanaka

  • Article |

    The occurrence of propagating spiral waves in multicellular organisms is associated with key biological functions. Now this type of wave has also been observed in dense bacterial populations, probably resulting from non-reciprocal cell–cell interactions.

    • Shiqi Liu
    • , Ye Li
    •  & Yilin Wu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Experiments probing three-dimensional crack propagation show that the critical strain energy needed to drive a crack is directly proportional to its geodesic length. This insight is a step towards a fully three-dimensional theory of crack propagation.

    • Xinyue Wei
    • , Chenzhuo Li
    •  & John M. Kolinski

  • News & Views |

    Ageing is a non-linear, irreversible process that defines many properties of glassy materials. Now, it is shown that the so-called material-time formalism can describe ageing in terms of equilibrium-like properties.

    • Beatrice Ruta
    •  & Daniele Cangialosi

  • Research Briefing |

    Studies of a biological active nematic fluid reveal a spontaneous self-constraint that arises between self-motile topological defects and mesoscale coherent flow structures. The defects follow specific contours of the flow field, on which vorticity and strain rate balance, and hence, contrary to expectation, they break mirror symmetry.

  • Article |

    When applying sufficient strain, the flow of dense granular matter becomes critical. It is now shown that this state corresponds to random loose packing for spheres with different friction coefficients and that these packings can be mapped onto the frictionless hard-sphere system.

    • Yi Xing
    • , Ye Yuan
    •  & Yujie Wang

  • Article |

    Dense suspensions are granular materials suspended in a liquid at high packing fractions, exhibiting high viscosity. The latter is now shown to be related to the formation of a network of rigid clusters at large shear stress.

    • Michael van der Naald
    • , Abhinendra Singh
    •  & Heinrich M. Jaeger

  • Article |

    In quasi-crystals, constituents do not form spatially periodic patterns, but their structures still give rise to sharp diffraction patterns. Now, quasi-crystalline patterns are found in a system of spherical macroscopic grains vibrating on a substrate.

    • A. Plati
    • , R. Maire
    •  & G. Foffi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Active flows in biological systems swirl. A coupling between active flows, elongated deformations and defect dynamics helps preserve self-organised structures against disordered swirling.

    • Louise C. Head
    • , Claire Doré
    •  & Tyler N. Shendruk

  • News & Views |

    Networks of dynamic actin filaments and myosin motors, confined in cell-like droplets, drive diverse spatiotemporal patterning of contractile flows, waves, and spirals. This multiscale active sculpting is tuned by the system dynamics and size.

    • Rae M. Robertson-Anderson

  • News & Views |

    Currently, a general framework explaining the fundamental dynamic transitions from solid to fluid of mechanically probed soft materials is lacking. Now, a unifying van der Waals-like model is proposed that describes the dynamic solid–liquid transition in the rheology of these materials.

    • Nick Oikonomeas-Koppasis
    •  & Peter Schall

  • Research Briefing |

    An approach combining single-cell imaging, agent-based simulations, and continuum mechanics theory is used to observe the effect of environmental stiffness on biofilm development. These measurements indicate that confined biofilms behave as active nematics, in which the internal organization and cell lineage are controlled by the shape and boundary of the biofilm.

  • Article |

    Confined biofilms can shape themselves and their boundary to modify their internal organisation. This mechanism could inform the development of active materials that control their own geometry.

    • Japinder Nijjer
    • , Changhao Li
    •  & Jing Yan

  • News & Views |

    Disordered systems that are far from equilibrium relax slowly towards their equilibrium. Now, we learn that the irreversible plastic deformations that form the wrinkles of a crumpled sheet result in a complex energy landscape that ages logarithmically.

    • Kari Dalnoki-Veress

  • Article |

    Many complex systems relax slowly towards equilibrium after a perturbation, without ever reaching it. Experiments with crumpled sheets now show that these relaxations involve intermittent avalanches of localized instabilities, whose slow-down leads to logarithmic aging.

    • Dor Shohat
    • , Yaniv Friedman
    •  & Yoav Lahini

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The Magnus effect refers to rotating objects developing a lift force when travelling through a fluid. It normally vanishes at microscopic length scales but now a very large Magnus effect is demonstrated for spinning colloids in viscoelastic fluids.

    • Xin Cao
    • , Debankur Das
    •  & Clemens Bechinger

  • News & Views |

    The liquid-crystal-like order of cells in epithelial tissues aids rearrangements, but there is disagreement over the dominant liquid crystal phase. Now, a unified approach reveals that two distinct symmetries dominate at different scales.

    • Daniel Beller

  • News & Views |

    The guiding of magnetic fields by soft ferromagnetic solids is well known and exploited in magnetic shielding applications. Now, ferroelectric nematic liquids are shown to analogously guide electric fields.

    • Alenka Mertelj

  • News & Views |

    An experimental approach enables the observation of the microscopic details of the relaxation of a highly equilibrated glass back to the liquid phase in real time. This points to a scenario where devitrification proceeds via localized seeds separated by macroscopic length scales.

    • Federico Caporaletti

  • Research Briefing |

    Drops sitting on an array of parallel fibres spontaneously move along the fibres when subject to an airflow perpendicular to the array. The drops show long-range aerodynamic interactions with their downstream and upstream neighbours, and these can catalyse drop coalescence and removal of drops from the fibres — relevant for applications such as fog harvesting and filtration.

  • Article |

    The wetting behaviour of drops attached to fibres is exploited in many applications including fog harvesting. The presence of a background air flow on fibre-attached drops on parallel fibres is now shown to lead to alignment, repulsion and coalescence processes.

    • Jessica L. Wilson
    • , Amir A. Pahlavan
    •  & Howard A. Stone

  • Article |

    The yielding transition in concentrated colloidal suspensions and emulsions lacks a universal description. A unified state diagram is now shown to underlie yielding for these materials, analogous to the van der Waals phase diagram for non-ideal gases.

    • Stefano Aime
    • , Domenico Truzzolillo
    •  & Luca Cipelletti

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Colloidal aggregates are conventionally formed by particle aggregation under thermal fluctuation. Now the structure and mechanical properties of aggregates can be controlled by an active bath of swimming Escherichia coli.

    • Daniel Grober
    • , Ivan Palaia
    •  & Jérémie Palacci

  • Article |

    The ferroelectric uniaxial nematic liquid-crystal phase features a freely reorientable polarization field. When confined in microchannels and subjected to electric fields, this polarization is now found to align with the channels due to a superscreening effect.

    • Federico Caimi
    • , Giovanni Nava
    •  & Tommaso Bellini

  • News & Views |

    Amorphous gel structures are present in our everyday lives in the form of food, cosmetics, and biological systems. Experiments now show that their formation cannot be explained within the framework of equilibrium physics.

    • Michael Schmiedeberg

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Visualizing dynamical changes in glassy systems is challenging because of the time and length scales involved. Now, atomic force microscopy is shown to be a viable method for obtaining a spatio-temporal description of the relaxation of a glass.

    • Marta Ruiz-Ruiz
    • , Ana Vila-Costa
    •  & Javier Rodriguez-Viejo

  • Article |

    Dynamic arrest in amorphous gels has so far been ascribed to glass transition. Now, experiments reveal a hierarchical structural ordering in dilute colloidal gels driven by the local potential energy, making this type of gel distinct from amorphous glasses.

    • Hideyo Tsurusawa
    •  & Hajime Tanaka

  • Article
    | Open Access

    ATPases can cyclically convert free energy into mechanical work. Now, it is shown that the GTPase Rab5 can also perform mechanical work as part of a two-component molecular motor with the tethering protein EEA1.

    • Anupam Singh
    • , Joan Antoni Soler
    •  & Shashi Thutupalli

  • Article |

    Colloidal gels consist of particles embedded in a fluid. It is now found that a gel’s viscoelastic spectrum, relating mechanical properties and deformation frequencies, can be understood by modelling these gels as networks of fractal viscoelastic units, connected hierarchically.

    • Minaspi Bantawa
    • , Bavand Keshavarz
    •  & Emanuela Del Gado

  • Article |

    Glasses relax internally even when their structure is frozen. Observations of a two-dimensional glass former now show that although structure relaxation freezes with the glass transition, non-constrained bonds survive; this accounts for persisting internal relaxation.

    • Yanshuang Chen
    • , Zefang Ye
    •  & Peng Tan

  • Article |

    Large-system molecular dynamics simulations of films of glass-forming polymers reveal spatially long-range tails of interface-driven gradients of the glass transition temperature, suggestive of a combined local caging and long-range collective elasticity origin of relaxation and vitrification in glass-forming liquids.

    • Asieh Ghanekarade
    • , Anh D. Phan
    •  & David S. Simmons

  • News & Views |

    Oil-coated bubbles bursting across interfaces enhance aerosol formation and transmission by producing jets that are smaller and faster than those formed by pristine bubbles.

    • Samantha A. McBride

  • Article |

    A bursting bubble produces a jet drop previously estimated to be too large to contribute to aerosolization. Oil-coated bubbles produce fast and thin jets, which break up into much smaller drops with potential implications for airborne transmission.

    • Zhengyu Yang
    • , Bingqiang Ji
    •  & Jie Feng

  • Article |

    Premelting refers to the formation of a thin liquid film on a crystal’s surface before it properly melts. Now, a similar mechanism is shown to occur before solid–solid transitions in colloidal crystals: the formation of a polymorphic crystalline layer.

    • Xipeng Wang
    • , Bo Li
    •  & Yilong Han

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The Lindemann criterion states that crystals melt when thermal vibrations overcome binding forces. It is now found that this picture does not hold for glasses, and that there is a universal relationship between glass temperature and thermal expansion.

    • Peter Lunkenheimer
    • , Alois Loidl
    •  & Konrad Samwer

  • Article |

    The protein VASP can undergo liquid–liquid phase separation. The interplay between the surface tension of the VASP droplet and actin polymerization controls the bundling of actin filaments, a necessary step for many cellular processes.

    • Kristin Graham
    • , Aravind Chandrasekaran
    •  & Jeanne C. Stachowiak

  • Article |

    The concept of quasiparticles helps to describe various quantum phenomena in solids. It is now shown that certain properties of a classical system of hydrodynamically interacting particles can also be described by means of quasiparticles.

    • Imran Saeed
    • , Hyuk Kyu Pak
    •  & Tsvi Tlusty

  • News & Views |

    Liquid crystal defect structures with topology similar to a Möbius strip can rotate, translate and transform into one another under an applied electric field.

    • Lisa Tran

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Topological defect structures that swim have been realized in liquid crystals. Now, a range of structures with topology reminiscent of a Möbius strip swim and transform into one another.

    • Hanqing Zhao
    • , Jung-Shen B. Tai
    •  & Ivan I. Smalyukh

  • Letter |

    A continuum active solid system is realized in a bacterial biofilm. Self-sustained elastic waves are observed, and two modes of collective motion with a sharp transition between them are identified.

    • Haoran Xu
    • , Yulu Huang
    •  & Yilin Wu

  • Article |

    The transition from a glassy to a liquid phase is normally assumed to take place cooperatively across the whole material. But now, experiments show that, under certain conditions, isolated regions of liquid can form in the glassy matrix first.

    • Ana Vila-Costa
    • , Marta Gonzalez-Silveira
    •  & Javier Rodriguez-Viejo

  • Article |

    Wrinkling happens because of mechanical instabilities arising from length mismatches. A theory now describes wrinkling in confined elastic shells and is expected to be relevant for the controlled design of complex wrinkle patterns.

    • Ian Tobasco
    • , Yousra Timounay
    •  & Eleni Katifori

  • Letter |

    The isotropy of a spherical droplet’s surface causes uniform distribution of adsorbed molecules. However, wrapping the droplet by a crystalline monolayer induces structural defects, enabling temperature-controllable positioning of adsorbates.

    • Subhomoy Das
    • , Alexander V. Butenko
    •  & Eli Sloutskin

Browse broader subjects

Browse narrower subjects

Browse Soft materials across other nature.com journals