Themed collection Soft Matter Recent Review Articles, 2024

The resistance of the liquid drop-like nucleus to deformation is dependent on whether the nuclear lamina is smooth or wrinkled. When it is smooth and taut, the nuclear shape can be calculated from geometric constraints on volume and surface area.

The manuscript offers a critical perspective on the shear-induced solid-to-liquid transition in amorphous materials, synthesizing insights from the talks and informal discussions that unfolded during a week of vibrant exchange at the Lorentz Center.

A new paradigm for generating adaptive functionality in materials.

Earth's surface materials constitute the basis for life and natural resources. Most of these materials can be catergorized as soft matter, yet a general physical understanding of the ground beneath our feet is still lacking. Here we provide some perspectives.

Advances in physical models and data science are improving predictions of polymer–solvent phase behavior and we discuss the different approaches taken today and the remaining barriers to making broadly useful predictions.

Glycogen is a biomaterial nanoparticle composed of sugar. In this perspective, the opportunities of glycogen in nanomedicine going forward is discussed.

Chiral analytes can bind to an achiral fluorescent system to generate circularly polarized luminescence (CPL). Subsequently, the CPL signal can be employed to determine the absolute configuration of the chiral substrate.

Supramolecular self-assembly of polymers with macrocycles has attracted the attention because it enables the spontaneous creation of nanostructures with unique properties.

This review aims to show the evolution of biohybrid robots, their key technologies, applications, and challenges. We believe that multimodal monitoring and stimulation technologies holds the potential to enhance the performance of biohybrid robots.

Various models of lipid lateral diffusion which gives distinct shapes of quasielastic neutron scattering spectra: ballistic motion – Gaussian, continuous/jump diffusion – Lorentzian, and confined diffusion – combined elastic and Lorentzian.

In this review, we overview recent advancements in decoupling the cellular microenvironment from the surrounding macroenvironment in the development of biomimetic engineered tissues.

We analyse and compare the physico-chemical properties of melanins with other biological macromolecular systems and conclude that they are the fourth fundamental class of bioorganic materials alongside nucleic acids, proteins, and polysaccharides.

In this review, we discuss the structural properties of the three most common types of silicone surfaces and their static and dynamic wetting properties. We review experimental and theoretical approaches for soft wetting.

The impact of fluid drops on solid substrates shows a wide variety of interesting behaviours, and has widespread interest in many industrial coating and spraying applications, such as ink-jet printing and agricultural pesticide sprays.

The goal of this review is to present enzymosomes as an innovative means for site-specific drug delivery.

The kinetics of gel formation are known to influence the gel properties, however the structures present before gelation are often not discussed or explored. We explore different methods of changing or pre-processing these structures before gelation to change the properties of the final gel.

We review recent advances in the theoretical, numerical, and experimental studies of critical Casimir forces in soft matter, with particular emphasis on their relevance for the structures of colloidal suspensions and on their dynamics.

A multitude of theoretical concepts devoted to photodeformation and alignment in azobenzene polymers are reviewed for their predictive abilities. The universality of the modern approach based on the orientation mechanism is demonstrated.

We highlight key results and outstanding questions emerging from recent literature, aiming to provide readers with a comprehensive overview of the latest advancements in understanding the conformation and dynamics of polyelectrolytes in dilute solutions.

With the rapid development of studies involving droplet microfluidics, drug delivery, cell detection, and microparticle synthesis, several models have been proposed to study the flow of fluid-filled bodies.

The mechanisms driving liquid metals and research progress on liquid metal actuators.

This review covers simple and complex coacervation in plant proteins: legume, oil seed, and cereal. We grouped the proteins by sources and properties and examined how processing affects phase behaviors.

Imidazole-based organic fluorophores with HLCT characteristics in excited states.

A comprehensive review of machine learning perspectives for the analysis and prediction of macroscopic and molecular properties of liquid crystals.

Research progress on the conformational properties of comb-like polymers.

The colon structure, factors significant to gut health, the fate of diet digesta entering the colon, and the functions of delivery systems in the colon.

Supramolecular gels, self-assembled from low-molecular-weight gelators (LMWGs), have a long history and a bright future.

This Tutorial Review showcases methylene glycol-sulfite pH-clocks and their use for the time-programming of soft matter self-assembly and chemomechanical actuation.

Mechanics studies the relationships between space, time, and matter.

Schematic of the set-up used for implementing IDIOM (interferometry digital imaging optical microscopy) protocols to visualize ultrathin films using reflected light microscopy and obtain nanotopography by converting pixelwise interference intensity into thickness.