Soft Matter Blog

‘Biomimetic Soft Matter’ Themed Issue published this week

07 Oct 2011

“Biomaterials are often soft materials. There is now growing interest in designing, synthesizing and characterising soft materials that mimic the properties of biological materials such as tissue, proteins, DNA or cells…” Read the full Editorial by Guest Editor, Ian Hamley.

View the whole Biomimetic Soft Matter Themed Issue on-line now.

The issue contains Review articles across the following topics of biomimetic soft matter:

To keep up-to-date with all the latest research, sign up for the Soft Matter e-Alert or RSS feeds or follow Soft Matter on Twitter or Facebook.

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Corners in Nematics

03 Oct 2011

By Serin Dabb, Deputy Editor.

Read here for free until 28 October

Landau-de Gennes theory has been used to tackle the behaviour of faceted particles embedded in a nematic liquid crystal matrix, in this Hot Paper from researchers at McGill University, Canada. The 2D model used is based on the Landau-de Gennes equations of nematodynamics in the absence of flow. A critical feature in the liquid crystal-faceted particle system is the presence of corners, which are always decorated by active surface defects or are connected to other corners by disclination strings that have line tension.

P. M. Phillips, N. Mei, L. Reven and Alejandro Rey, Soft Matter, 2011, 7, 8592-8604.

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Oppositely Charged Hairy Colloids

29 Sep 2011

By Serin Dabb, Deputy Editor.

Read for free here until 28 October

Oppositely charged colloidal particles exhibit fully reversible assembly under varying salt concentrations in water. Fluorescent polystyrene colloidal particles are charged by a grafted polyelectrolyte brush. Below a certain concentration oppositely charged colloids form clusters and gels with a fractal nature. These particles are a promising step toward a reversible and controlled self-assembling system in water, using colloidal particles as building blocks.

Evan Spruijt, Henriëtte E. Bakker, Thomas E. Kodger, Joris Sprakel, Martien A. Cohen Stuart and Jasper van der Gucht, Soft Matter, 2011, 7, 8281-8290.

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Three recently published Hot Articles

26 Sep 2011

By Serin Dabb, Deputy Editor.

Read for free until 24 October…

Hot Review: This review summarizes recent developments in the field of self-assembly of non-linear polymers at the air/water interface, focusing on the influence of molecular architecture. Four classes of non-linear systems (polymer brushes, star-like polymers, dendritic polymers, and linear–dendritic polymers) are highlighted to elaborate their interfacial behaviors originating from different molecular architectures. Lei Zhao and Zhiqun Lin, Soft Matter, 2011, DOI: 10.1039/C1SM05745F.

Hot Paper: Researchers investigate the origin of the so-called magnetostriction effect (the deformation of a soft magnetic elastomer) in response to a uniform magnetic field. In particular the type of structural short-range order in the magnetic microparticle assembly is discussed. Oleg V. Stolbov, Yuriy L. Raikher and Maria Balasoiu, Soft Matter, 2011, 7, 8484-8487.

Hot Highlight: Helical assemblies from chiral block copolymers (BCPs*) have been intensively studied recently due to their unique hierarchical architectures arising from the interplay of various secondary interactions, and are discussed here in this Highlight Article. Yeo-Wan Chiang, Rong-Ming Ho, Christian Burger and Hirokazu Hasegawa, Soft Matter, 2011, DOI: 10.1039/C1SM05921A.

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Soft Matter poster prize winner: FLC 2011

23 Sep 2011

By Russell Johnson, Development Editor.

Congratulations to Jason Morvan (Kent State University, USA) for winning the Soft Matter poster prize at the 13th International Conference on Ferroelectric Liquid Crystals.

Jason Morvan’s winning poster was entitled “Electro-mechanical response of electro-spum polylactic acid fibers dispersed with ferroelectric barium titanate nanoparticles”

Jason Morvan with his winning poster

Nélida Gimeno (Universidad de Zaragoza, Spain) won a Journal of Materials Chemistry poster prize for her poster “Liquid Crystalline Janus-type co-dendrimers based on bent-core units“.

The 13th International Conference on Ferroelectric Liquid Crystals was held 29th August – 2nd September at Niagara Falls, Canada.

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Aspen Center for Physics 2012 Winter Conference on Biological Pattern Formation

21 Sep 2011

By Serin Dabb, Deputy Editor.

We would like to bring to your attention the Aspen Center for Physics 2012 Winter Conference in Biological Physics, January 2-7, 2012: “Growth and Form: Pattern Formation in Biology.” We have an exciting program planned, with a list of invited speakers that can be found at the conference web page.

We encourage all those who are interested to submit an application.
The deadline for applications is October 15, with notifications to start November 1. Post-deadline applications will be considered only as space permits.

Please see the on-line application form . Limited financial support is available for junior participants.

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From hierarchical self-assemblies to biomimetics.

21 Sep 2011

By Katherine Thomas, Web Writer.

In a recent talk at the Physical Aspects of Polymer Science conference in the UK, Olli Ikkala discussed his work looking at the self-assembly of polymers and biopolymers.

The self-assembly of polymers is a powerful tool for creating or increasing the functionality of a material. Several different functionalities can often be combined in one material, which may also respond to external stimuli. The scale of the pattern required determines the material that should be used. For example surfactants and amphiphiles self-assemble with patterns on the 1-10nm scale, block copolymers on the 10-100nm scale and colloidal platelets or nanofibres form patterns >100nm. Examples of self-assembled functional materials include tuneable optically active materials, electrically conducting materials and porous materials for use as filters or catalysis templates.

But what if we want to do something more fancy and use biological materials to form structures? This is exactly what Ikkala has been doing, using nature as his inspiration. Examples in his talk included the self-assembly of diblock copolypeptides to form ‘woodpile’ like structures with well-defined lamellae spacing’s. Also discussed was the formation and assembly of cellulose nanofibres to form mechanically robust macrofibres. This was done via a wet extrusion process. The resulting materials have excellent mechanical properties. Using these nanocellulose fibres to form aerogels and coating with titania dioxide results in materials with excellent oil absorbency. This was demonstrated in a nice video. Since the materials float on water and only absorb oil (no water), the materials could potentially be used to clean up oil spills.

Ikkala is also interested in using nanoclays to produce artificial nacre. The replication of nacre in the lab often involves time consuming, complex, energy intensive processes. The use of nanoclays enables lightweight nacre-mimetic films to be created in a roll-to-roll process. These materials have good strength and are very good heat shields. In a video played by Ikkala it was seen that a few mm of the nanoclay nacre was sufficient to protect silk, held on the other side, from damage by a 3000°C (?) heat torch. According to Ikkala: nanoclays are a “good approach to mimicking nacre, but the [material design] is not yet complete”. They do however “know exactly what they need to do” to iron out the problems.

Other work by Olli Ikkala, which may be of interested to Soft Matter readers includes:

Controlled growth of silver nanoparticle arrays guided by a self-assembled polymer-peptide conjugate, Soft Matter (2010).

Long and entangled native cellulose I nanofibres allow flexible aerogels and hierarchically porous templates for functionalities, Soft Matter (2008).

Tailoring of the hierarchical structure within electrospun fibres due to supramolecular comb-coil block copolymers, Soft Matter (2007).

Group photo of delegates at the conference. Olli Ikkala is on the front row, second from the left.

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Congratulations to the poster prize winners at Soft Matter Far From Equilibrium

20 Sep 2011

By Russell Johnson, Development Editor.

Congratulations to Leopoldo Gomez (Leiden University, The Netherlands), Shashi Thutupalli (Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization, Germany) and Yusuke Maeda (The Rockefeller University, USA) for winning the Soft Matter poster prizes at the Gordon-Kenan Research Seminar 2011: Soft Matter Far From Equilibrium.

The three poster prize winners at Soft Matter Far From Equilibrium

Left to right: Leopoldo Gomez, Shashi Thutupalli, Yusuke Maeda

The titles of the winning posters were:

Leopoldo Gomez “Shock Waves in Jammed Solids”
Shashi Thutupalli “Collective dynamics of swimming emulsions”
Yusuke Maeda “The Soret effect from molecular separation to nonequilibrium RNA world”

Soft Matter Far From Equilibrium was held at Colby-Sawyer College in New London, NH, USA, on Aug 13-14, 2011. Alexandra Zidovska, Harvard University, chaired the conference. We wish Leopoldo Gomez, Shashi Thutupalli, Yusuke Maeda and Alexandra Zidovska all the best for the future.

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Christos Likos appointed as new Soft Matter Associate Editor

20 Sep 2011

By Liz Davies, Editor.

I am delighted to announce that Professor Christos Likos, University of Vienna, has been appointed as an Associate Editor for Soft Matter.

Christos studied Electrical Engineering at the National Technical University of Athens, from which he graduated with a Diploma in 1988. He then joined the Department of Physics at Cornell, where he obtained his Ph.D. degree in 1993, working under the supervision of Neil Ashcroft on density functional theory of freezing and also collaborating with Chris Henley on problems of geometrical packing. He was Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at the University of Munich (1993-94), European Communities Fellow at the University of Trieste (1995-96), and Research Fellow at the Jülich Research Center (1997- 98), before joining the Department of Physics of the Heinrich Heine University of Düsseldorf, in which he obtained his Habilitation in Theoretical Physics in 2001. From 2002 to 2003 he was a Heisenberg Fellow of the German Research Foundation (DFG) at the University of Cambridge, Department of Theoretical Chemistry, before assuming a Professorship at the Department of Physics at the University of Düsseldorf in August 2003. He has held a visiting professorship at the University of Rome la Sapienza in 2005, as well as visiting scholar positions at Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania in 2006 and 2007. From 2007 to 2008, he was Senior Fellow of the Erwin Schrödinger Institute for Mathematical Physics in Vienna. As of June 2010, he is Professor (Multiscale Computational Physics) at the Faculty Physics of the University of Vienna.

Christos’ research interests revolve around coarse-graining, structure and dynamics of complex fluids, mainly solutions of colloidal particles and macromolecular aggregates. He is Coordinator of the EU-wide ITN “Physics of Complex Colloids: Equilibrium and Driven” (ITN-COMPLOIDS, http://www.itn-comploids.eu), a joint effort of leading laboratories to analyze the properties of complex fluids in- and out-of-equilibrium.

Christos joins our team of Soft Matter Associate Editors, Darrin Pochan and Lei Jiang. Choose to have your next high impact soft matter paper handled by one of our professional team of Editors in our Cambridge office or one of our Associate Editors by submitting online today!

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Soft Matter Blog

‘Biomimetic Soft Matter’ Themed Issue published this week

Top Ten most-read Soft Matter articles in August

Corners in Nematics

Oppositely Charged Hairy Colloids

Three recently published Hot Articles

Soft Matter poster prize winner: FLC 2011

Aspen Center for Physics 2012 Winter Conference on Biological Pattern Formation

From hierarchical self-assemblies to biomimetics.

Congratulations to the poster prize winners at Soft Matter Far From Equilibrium

Christos Likos appointed as new Soft Matter Associate Editor

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