Themed collection Soft Matter Open Access Spotlight

First perspective on machine learning for shape-memory polymers, providing beginners with foundational knowledge and experienced researchers with in-depth insights.

Gel polymer electrolytes can exhibit enhanced ionic conductivity and interfacial stability by achieving an optimal balance between surface adhesion and bulk mechanical properties.

Condensate droplets arise from phase separation into two liquid phases α (white) and β (green). Vesicle membranes exposed to such droplets are divided up into two membrane segments (red and purple), which can form membrane nanotubes.

In this perspective, we discuss the fundamental mechanisms and the length scales responsible for the formation of micro- and nanoplastics (MNPLs), MNPL size, shape, and morphologies, their metrology, and open questions in the field.

Bacterial biofilms that grow under confinement can mechanically interact with their environment to generate various global geometries and forms of cellular patterning.

Microcontact printing (μCP) is a versatile and low-cost technique for surface patterning, allowing for the fabrication of intricate designs with relative ease.

The co-assembly of nanometer- and submicrometer-sized colloidal particles can result in multi-component superstructures with unique properties.

We review the recent theoretical and simulation studies on interactions between curvature-inducing proteins and membranes.

This review clarifies the structure–process–property relationship in PVA-based polarizers.

Nanoprecipitation is a versatile, low-energy technique for synthesizing nanomaterials through phase separation, enabling precise tuning of nanomaterial properties.

Ion-conducting polymers (ICPs) are gaining interest in various scientific and technological fields. This review highlights advancements in ICP thin films using chemical vapor deposition (CVD) and addresses challenges of traditional methods.

This review explores network designs that address the trade-off between toughness and elasticity, offering strategies to develop materials with both high fracture resistance and low hysteresis for advanced applications.

This review is about drops of a liquid with high dielectric permittivity that slide over a solid surface with high electrical resistivity.

This tutorial provides reproducible protocols for culturing and experimenting with Myxococcus xanthus, enabling studies of motility, fruiting body formation, predation, and collective behaviors in active matter research.

A tutorial review on mesoscale computer simulations of fluid lipid membranes presenting three tutorials with repositories of ready-to-run codes for tether pulling, membrane tubulation and membrane fluctuation analysis.

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) has been introduced through detailed tutorials, accompanied by a code package, as a powerful technique suitable for versatile investigations in fluid mechanics and soft matter physics.

Direct visualization reveals that electrostatic interactions govern the compression and ordering of highly charged microgels at the air/water interface, leading to enhanced structural order and elasticity under basic conditions.

The spreading of a drop in a wedge shows anomalous diffusion scaling, with the diffusion exponent directly linked to the fluid's rheological properties.

In models of Pickering emulsion stabilisation, it is assumed that Young’s equation defines the angle of a solid particle at the oil/water interface. Here, we consider the implications for stability when the particle is displaced by an external force.

A method to extract gel-forming mucins from pig trachea is developed. These airway mucins form viscous gels resembling human airway mucus, making them a useful model for lung disease research.

Connecting active and passive monomers to form partially active polymers can lead to directed transport towards regions of high or low chemical concentration.

Despite its many applications, three-dimensional radical polymerization remains poorly understood.

Chirality-induced flows explain independent rotation of bacterial vortices under weak confinement (left) and correlated vortices under strong confinement (right).

Hydrogel coatings inhibit seed germination through oxygen restriction and stiffness effects, not water limitation.

We employed intensity fluctuations of evanescent light scattering to probe spatiotemporal correlations in the near-wall confined motion of microspheres on supported lipid bilayers (SLBs).

A robust alternative method to measure receding contact angles is suggested.

RT-DC is applied to GUVs and accurately matched with numerical simulation data to extract the area expansion modulus, building the basis for contact-free, high-throughput mechanics phenotyping and sorting of vesicles.

Single-chain elasticity profiles of a linear synthetic polymer demonstrate solvent-dependent conformations. The solvent-induced conformational changes further result in hysteresis in single-chain elasticity profiles under poor solvent conditions.

Young's modulus and Poisson's ratio of a soft elastic film were measured by coupling the tracking of 3D displacements of particles during flat punch indentation with a mechanics-based numerical analysis.

Topography mediated stiffness gradient substrate for cellular mechanosenising.

We propose a simple physical model that can predict the phase behavior of phase separated gels produced via elastic micro phase separation.

Quantifying P. aeruginosa motion in normal and pathological native human airway mucus and mucus simulants with decoupled elastic and viscous moduli reveals that elasticity promotes fast directional bacterial transport within mucus and complex fluids.

We carried out theoretical analysis and experimental investigations to update our understanding concerning rupture and fracture transitions in continuous stretching of vulcanized natural rubber (NR).

Shear-aligned living liquid crystals exhibit a cascade of bend instabilities followed by defect nucleation and proliferation after shear cessation.

SANS profiles of AOT–SiC water-in-oil microemulsions in various solvents are provided.

Point mutations and thermal energy enable control over the assembly of a thermoresponsive silica-binding elastin-like polypeptide, while MD simulations and silicification reveal how the soft template transitions from micelle to proteinosome.

Peptide ‘bundlemers’ are homotetrameric coiled-coils that form discrete cylindrical particles in aqueous solution. Depending on solution conditions, bundlemers can form different ordered nanostructures from liquid crystals to nanoporous lattices.

DNA molecules, modified with cholesterol functional groups, are physically anchored to lipid-encapsulated silica nanoparticles to drive their colloidal assembly as the process is analyzed with scattering and simulations.

Coacervate films with varying interaction strengths were exposed to dielectric spectroscopy and it was finally established that T_g and fragility have opposing trends when interaction strength increases.

Cononsolvency occurs when mixing two good solvents results in poor-solvent conditions for polymers. We examine how orientation-dependent interactions influence microscopic mechanisms of cononsolvency.

A numerical study is presented in order to address the dynamics of compound vesicles under shear flow, explicitly including thermal fluctuations. This allows us to observe a rich phenomenology well matching with available experiments.

The properties arising from di-substitution promote smectic layering in a disaccharide glycolipid, and are attributed to its flexible architecture and shape.

Fungal fermentation offers a promising approach for the development of engineered living materials (ELMs).

A sustainable and one pot synthetic approach is presented to prepare temperature and pH responsive biocompitable fluerescent hyperbracnched poly(β-aminoester) and its application for controlled delivery and nanosensors is demonstrated.

We derive effective equations of motion governing the dynamics of sharp interfaces in phase-separated binary mixtures driven by spatio-temporal modulations of their material properties.

We investigated the rotational and translational dynamics of gold nanorods in semidilute solutions of bovine submaxillary mucin (BSM), a biologically relevant bottlebrush polymer rich in MUC5B.

Neutron reflectometry and ellipsometry were employed to track the structural changes throughout triolein lipolysis. These findings further our understanding of triolein film digestion and demonstrate how NR can reveal important structural changes.

Various sub-structures of the nematic liquid crystal phase were characterised and identified by use of machine learning techniques. Obtained accuracies were of the order larger than 95%.

By measuring the aggregation dynamics in a confined granular mixture of glass and magnetized steel spheres under vertical vibration, we find two timescales, related with the dipolar and susceptible properties of the spheres.

This paper shows that the size of solvent phase separation near the contact line of a swollen solid grows with time following the scaling t^0.32 at long time scales when the underlying deformation is linear.

Lipidated analogue of glucagon-like peptide 1 rapidly self-assembles into regular stable nano-assemblies.

Block copolymer lithium electrolytes of polystyrene (red) and poly(ethylene oxide) (blue) with morphologies of spheres, cylinders, and lamellae were studied. Confinement increased conductivity in nanostructures with curvature but not in lamellae.

We present a spectral method (in time) to efficiently compute truss dynamics, where a network Laplacian captures elastic coupling between joints and external forces. It enables fast and accurate evaluation of natural frequencies and impact responses.

A polyethylene tube being inflated. Pressure is highest when a bulge initiates, and reduces rapidly as the bulge grows non-axisymmetrically.

We study both experimentally and numerically the control over the generation of textures of umbilic defects in electrically biased nematic liquid crystals using a spatiotemporally structured magnetic field.

We present an apparatus that probes the macroscopic mechanical response and the microscopic motion in soft solids under uni-axial strain. In PDMS networks in the linear regime, non-affine dynamics dominate on length scales smaller than a few microns.

We use experiments and simulations to investigate the propulsion of flagella with uniform intrinsic curvature in the stress-free state. Results suggest the propulsion can transition between positive and negative by changing curvature or Sp.

Normal and oblique irradiation of a photosensitive polyvinyl cinnamate substrate by a linearly polarized ultraviolet light produces either apolar or polar planar alignment of a ferroelectric nematic liquid crystal.

For studying the structure of microgel particles at the air/water interface, specular and off-specular X-ray reflectivity (XRR/OSR) allows in situ measurements without any labelling techniques.

Run-and-tumble agents able to tune the probability of switching between the run and the tumble phase can learn chemotactic motion when navigating in an environment characterized by a concentration field pointing towards a circular target.

The mechanics of complex coacervates are governed not only by electrostatic interactions but also by polymer molecular weight (M_w) and chain stiffness, yet their combined role remains insufficiently resolved for biopolyelectrolytes.

We demonstrate a physical implementation of Monte Carlo sampling using the Brownian motion of microscopic rods, applied to the classical Buffon's needle experiment.

A series of chemically similar liquid crystal elastomers which show an auxetic response at high cross-link densities and a semi-soft elastic response at low cross-link densities is presented. We suggest that these are extrema of continuum behaviour.

Snags are unwanted defects in textiles where fibers are pulled out of place. Here, we intentionally introduce snags to woven sheets to create curvatures.

Supramolecular self-assembly of conjugated amphiphiles is governed by the interplay between enthalpic attraction from π–π interactions and entropic penalties from geometry-mediated steric repulsions.

A model bacterial membrane is degraded by exposure to Cu(OH)₂ nanorods in oxidative medium. Neutron reflectometry revealed the exact mass distribution, and provided an accurate methodology to study the effect of metal nanoparticles on biomembranes.

The interplay of capillary attraction and Marangoni-driven repulsion between two surfer beads results in a spatial oscillator. In clusters of these beads the coupling leads to partially and fully synchronized states depending on their size.

Transition from steady unidirectional motion to oscillatory motion revealed for a Marangoni swimmer interacting with passive particle raft under 1D confinement and a cargo transport potential observed in the steady regime.

Separation of passive particles in the mixture by the effects of confinement and activity.

Using scanning ion conductance microscopy, we found that the mechanical stiffness of living platelets is directly related to volume changes during osmotic compression/expansion as well as during spreading on a surface and under spatial confinement.