Themed collection Soft Matter Pioneering Investigators

This review highlights innovative hydrogel platforms—from 2D to 3D, including 2.5D and sandwich systems—that reveal how mechanical cues regulate cell behavior, with translational potential in tissue engineering and disease modeling.

This review covers experimental approaches to induce controlled adhesive forces between particles and discusses the effects of inter-particle cohesion on granular mechanics across scales, from individual particles to bulk behavior.

We describe approaches, results and insights from multi-year hackathons to enable their use in soft matter training and innovation.

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

Two-point mean-square-displacement analysis utilizes trajectories of a pair of probes to quantify their intrinsic mobility and/or motional correlation.

We study the ground state thermodynamics of a model class of geometrically frustrated assemblies, known as warped-jigsaw particles.

We demonstrate the ability to engineer composites of microtubules and actin that can entrain bacteria cells while retaining structural integrity.

Experimental studies on a five-ring ester-difluoromethoxy linked ferroelectric nematic liquid crystal.

We construct a minimal theoretical model to study pattern formation of lipid domains in bilayer membranes, which is driven by the coupling between the phase separation of lipids and the elastic deformation of the membrane.

Dielectric pillars induce a frequency-dependent repulsion for metallo-dielectric Janus active particles, changing their effective size in a versatile way to control the spatial distribution of microswimmers.

We demonstrate the circle-Hough transform (CHT) as a highly efficient and general computer vision tool for the quantitative assessment of droplet size from optical microscopy images of Pickering emulsions.

We show that supported bilayers from ellipsoidal pores that propagate perpendicular to the stretch direction akin the fracturing of soft gels.

Liquid crystalline networks able to work as photoresponsive actuators were prepared by different photopolymerization approaches. This work shows how the macromolecular structure influences the performances during both thermal and light stimulation.

Applying longitudinal cuts to the surface of a self-avoiding tethered membrane destabilizes its flat phase and leads to the formation of novel phases fully controlled by the balance between number of cuts and the edge width.

We theoretically study Taylor's swimming sheet near a Winkler elastic solid. This minimal approach allows us to explicitly formulate analytically the generic behaviours and mechanisms of microswimming near soft boundaries.

Proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) and uniform manifold approximation & projection (UMAP) are used to study the relaxation dynamics of thermoresponsive polymers and single-chain nanoparticles with energy-conserving DPD simulations.

The influence of nanoparticle size, shape and wettability on adhesion at liquid interfaces is explored using a combination of atomic force microscopy and computer simulations.

Stress quantification can be observed during single fiber pull-out test in a polymer matrix composite with stress sensing molecules.

Accuracy in the measurement of mechanical properties is essential for precision engineering and for the interrogation of composition–property relationships.

We present our computational framework for the rapid analysis of polymer structure and inverse design strategy (RAPSIDY) that enables inverse design of polymers for desired structures by accelerating multiscale structure stability evaluation.

μ-Ballistic simulations performed on the PGN thin films reveal a positive influence of cohesive energy density on the performance. PGN with heavier nanoparticles arrest bullets more rapidly, however, lighter particles exhibit a higher .

We propose a new framework to characterise yield stress fluids for direct ink writing that enables us to link trends in rheological metrics with printing resolution.

We present a strategy for obtaining membranes on substrates with tunable geometry and stiffness for biological and material science studies.