News & Events

We have packed all instruments and laboratory items and we are moving to Cornell University (https://www.cornell.edu/).

From July 1, 2023, we will be affiliated with the Departments of Materials Science and Engineering (https://www.mse.cornell.edu/mse) and Physics (https://physics.cornell.edu/)

Rob's paper "The generalized Clapeyron equation and its application to confined ice growth" is now published in the Journal of Glaciology - congratulations! The Clapeyron equation is often used to describe how stresses build up as ice forms. Here, Rob and colleagues explore the assumptions of this model, and determine how it breaks down under more extreme conditions.

Check out the paper to learn more about confined ice growth: https://doi.org/10.1017/jog.2023.28

Andrea's, Hendrik's, and Aleks' preprint is now on arXiv, describing a new surface passivation method for super-repellence of aqueous macromolecular condensates.

Our paper describes a way to counteract this by coating microscope slides with a thin transparent hydrogel that exhibits complete dewetting and minimal pinning of phase-separated droplets in aqueous solution.

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2306.02198

Stefanie's, Rob's and Eric's paper on Strain Stiffening Elastomers With Swelling Inclusions is now published in Soft Matter.

Congratulations to all authors!

The paper provides a generic analysis of inhomogeneously swollen elastomers. Computation of the macroscopic effective stiffness, as well as an in-depth quantification of local stiffness maps allows for a further exploration of the novel design space of hydroelastomers.

For details: https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlepdf/2023/SM/D3SM00496A

Aleks, Eric, Gianna and Lotta attended the BML Cellular Matters Conference in Ascona, Ticino.

Aleks and Eric gave talks about phase separating proteins at the BML Cellular Matters Conference. Gianna presented a poster about the pancake-like morphology of the Golgi apparatus compartments and Lotta had a poster about the structure of biomolecular condensates.

Tom's preprint on the dynamics of stress granules is online.

Tom and co-authors posted their latest work on the dynamics of stress granules on BioRxiv. They found that stress granules are transported by actin flow. Towards the cell center, actin hands granules over to the microtubule network, which accommodates them through favorable wetting interactions.

Check out the preprint: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.06.04.543599v1

Aleks and Teagan are visiting us.

Dr. Aleksander Rebane, former PostDoc and group leader in our lab, moved on to Abu Dhabi New York University as an Assistant Professor - he is now visiting us until July. Dr. Teagan Bate, future PostDoc with us at Cornell University, is visiting the lab for 10 days to learn about biomolecular condensates.

Congrats! Alex successfully defended his PhD thesis on 10th May 2023.

Alex defended his PhD thesis about polymerization from lipid membranes. Thanks to Jan Vermant, Jan Genzer and Manfred Fiebig from the defense committee for great discussions!

Carla and co-authors posted their latest work on "Elastic Microphase Separation" on arXiv. The elastic microphase separation process has some fascinating features, such as the ability to produce bicontinuous microstructures with a well-defined length scale and the presence of a new thermodynamic boundary with aspects of classical binodal and spinodal curves. Check out the preprint here if you want to know more about this unusual phase separation route: https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.11419.

Carla and Rob gave invited talks in Rome and Strasbourg last week.

Carla talked about the mechanical control of bicontinuous structures in elastic matrices in her invited talk at the Interchall2023 conference, "Interdisciplinary challenges: from non-equilibrium physics to life sciences," in Rome. Rob's presentation at the departmental seminar at the Institut Charles Sadron in Strasbourg was about controlling phase separation with polymer networks.

Dominic's and Rob's preprint on the role of polycrystallinity on freezing damage around ice is online.

Dominic and Rob have just finished their latest work about the role of polycrystallinity on freezing damage around ice.
Check out the preprint here if you want to know more about why grain size in ice makes a surprisingly big difference to how hard ice can push on its surroundings: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2303.13428.pdf .

Congratulations to Carla for winning a poster prize at the APS March Meeting.

Many congratulations to Carla for winning a poster prize in the "2022 Gallery of Soft Matter Competition" of the APS. Carla received the award during the APS March Meeting this year.

Eric and Carla gave talks at the APS March Meeting 2023 in Las Vegas.

This year the March Meeting of the American Physical Society took place in Las Vegas. Eric talked about "Biologically-Inspired Active Droplets: from Reaction Crucibles to Robots(?)" and Carla about "Arresting Spinodal-like Structures in Elastic Matrices".

Our graduated PhD, Dr. Thomas Böddeker, has received an EMBO Postdoctoral Fellowship.

Tom defended his PhD thesis in Dec 2022 and went on to a Postdoc in the laboratory of Prof. Satoshi Sawai at the University of Tokyo in Japan. He has been awarded an EMBO Fellowship to work in the laboratory of Interfacial Cell Biology with Dr. Roland L. Knorr in the Department of Biology of Humboldt University of Berlin. There he will study the effect of wetting phenomena on structure formation in neurons.

Alba's and Eric's paper on controlled-radical polymerization to control phase separation is published.

The paper shows how it is possible to use controlled-radical polymerization to control phase separation. Alba and co-authors used atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP) to induce and arrest phase separation in a solid matrix.  This is the first time that ATRP has been applied to the synthesis of homopolymeric nano- and micro-structured materials!

Paper: https://doi.org/10.1002/anie.202217683

Dominique and Oriane joined our lab.

Dominique will work with Lotta on protein purification as a Hiwi and Oriane will study ice growth in her Master's thesis together with Dominic and Rob.

Our PhDs are now on a variety of exciting paths!

Dr. Tom Böddeker: He is now a PostDoc in the laboratory of Prof Satoshi Sawai at the University of Tokyo in Japan.

Dr. Alba Sicher: She is joining climeworks as a Development Specialist (R&D) in March 2023.

Dr. Hendrik Spanke: He is now a Product Engineer at Dyconex since August 2022.

Dr. Andrea Testa: He is now a Product Manager at Sensirion since August 2022.

Dr. Tianqi Sai: She is going to study Fine Arts in Hong Kong.

Stefanie's paper on PDMS rupture is out! Congratulations!

Stefanie's paper on how PDMS chains rupture is out in Macromolecules - congratulations! Check it out to understand how Stefanie and colleagues used molecular dynamics studies to determine how PDMS chains rupture and elastic networks fail.

Paper: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acs.macromol.2c02576

Our PosDocs Etienne and Nico have found new positions as group leaders! Our group leader Aleks moved on to an Assistant Professorship.

Dr. Nicolas Bain is starting as a CNRS researcher at Institut Lumière Matière.

Dr. Etienne Jambon-Puillet is also starting as a CNRS researcher at LadHyX (École polytechnique). 

Dr. Aleksander Rebane, group leader in our group, is now an Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Physics at New York University in Abu Dhabi. 

Apply here if you would like to join as a post-doctoral researcher at Cornell University.

Interested in helping us launch our new lab at Cornell? You can apply for a post-doctoral position here: (https://cornell.ca1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_5dbfAZeim34QNUy).

Rob's manuscript "The generalized Clapeyron equation and its application to confined ice growth" is online on arxiv (https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.03895) - congratulations!

The Clapeyron equation is often used to describe how stresses build up as ice forms. Here Rob and colleagues explore the assumptions of this model, and determine how it breaks down under more extreme conditions.

Our group will move to Cornell University from July 1, 2023. We will be affiliated with the Departments of Materials Science and Engineering (https://www.mse.cornell.edu/mse) and Physics (https://physics.cornell.edu/). We are actively recruiting postdocs to join us in launching our new lab.  

Eric gave a talk titled "Living droplets get to work" at Cambridge University at the Fluid Mechanics Webinar Series. It's now available online! (https://cassyni.com/events/XTMYWWcsaHXaQ3SsDnUnnq)

Featuring our recent paper, amongst others:https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26532-0

Lotta got an Independence Grant from the NCCR Bio-inspired Materials (https://www.bioinspired-materials.ch/en/) to employ a student for four months to look into surprising chemo-mechanical effects observed in elastomers.

Yanxia successfully defended her PhD research plan. Congratulations!

Yanxia successfully presented her research plan proposal. Congratulations! She will study the self assembly of porous hydrogels.

This project is supervised by Dr. Robert Style.

Congrats! Sai successfully defended her thesis on 6^th Dec.

Sai defended her thesis about absorption-enhanced scattering for structural color. Thanks to Mathias Kolle and André Studart from the defense committee for great discussions and thanks to Jan Vermant for chairing the defense!

This was the third defense within six days for the group who crafted three amazing PhD hats.

Congrats! Alba successfully defended her thesis on 5^th Dec.

Alba defended her thesis about structural color resulting from polymerization-induced phase separation (https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2021/sm/d1sm00210d). Thanks to Esther Amstad and André Studart from the defense committee for great discussions!

Congrats! Tom successfully defended his thesis on 1^st Dec.

Tom presented his work on interactions of membraneless organelles with the cytoskeleton (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-022-01537-8), specifically microtubules and actin. There was an excellent discussion with Suliana Manley and Thomas Michaels on the PhD defense committee.

Nan gave a talk at the 75th Annual Meeting of the Division of Fluid Dynamics of the American Physical Society. He talked about the "elastocapillary wake" as a phenomenon observed when droplets slide on a soft substrate. 

Here is the abstract for more informtion (https://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/DFD22/Session/T24.11).

Rob got an SNF grant to freeze water in soft materials.

Rob got a grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation (https://www.snf.ch/en) for two PhD students to investigate freezing water in soft materials.

Picture shows freezing salt water. Picture credit: Dominic Gerber/Rob Style.

New Bachelor's and Master's students joined the lab.

Welcome to our new Bachelor's and Master's students! Erdem, Philipp and Pierre (left to right) will be working on various aspects of the mechanical properties of PDMS.

Eric's book chapter on "Active materials: Biological benchmarks and transport limitations" was published in the Lecture Notes of the Les Houches Summer school from 2018, Volume 112, titled "Cover Active Matter and Nonequilibrium Statistical Physics" (https://global.oup.com/academic/content/series/l/lecture-notes-of-the-les-houches-summer-school-lnlh/?lang=en&cc=us). Congratulations, Eric!

Alex, Carla, Lotta and Rob attended Swiss Soft Days.

The Swiss Soft Days (https://swisssoftdays.ethz.ch/) took place at ETH Zurich on 20th Oct. Alex, Carla, Lotta and Rob went and Alex gave a talk about "Surface-Initiated Polymerization From Lipid Membrane". The conference was a great opportunity to discuss and connect - many thanks to everyone organizing it!

Eric has been elected as a 2022 Fellow of the American Physical Society (https://www.aps.org/programs/honors/fellowships/index.cfm) (APS)! The APS specifically honors Eric's contributions to "fundamental insights into the physics of diverse colloidal, polymeric, and biological systems, and the development of experimental methodologies to make, measure, and manipulate these materials."

Gianna successfully defended her PhD research plan. Congratulations!

Gianna successfully presented her research plan proposal. Congratulations! She will study the pancake-like morphology of the membrane-bounded Golgi compartments.

This project is funded by the SNF Ambizione grant obtained by Dr. Aleksander A. Rebane.

We went on lab retreat for two days to have lots of fun in form of science discussions, specifically with talks by Laura Alvarez and Sofia Magkiriadou, a pub quiz and further indoor and outdoor games.

Alba, Alex, Aleks, Carla, Etienne, Katie, Lotta, Nico, Rob and Yanxia went to the International Soft Matter Conference (http://ismc2022.home.amu.edu.pl/) this year which took place in Poznań in Poland.

Links to the posters:

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/jacsau.1c00443

https://nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26532-0

https://nature.com/articles/s41567-022-01537-8

https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.127.208001

https://pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticleLanding/2022/SM/D2SM00946C

Many congratulations to Dominic for winning the 1st poster prize at the Materials and Processes symposium (https://doctoral-school.ethz.ch/events/grad-symp.html) at ETH on 1st September! Dominic gave a great poster presentation and then swept everyone off their feet by a fabulous 2-min poster pitch talk sketching his research on a piece of paper.

Find out more about the literally cool topic Dominic presented here:https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2200748119

Maria, Lotta and Tom gave talks at the DPG conference in Regensburg.

The annual meeting of the German Physical Society (DPG) took place again in person in Regensburg again after 2.5 years. Maria presented her work on diatoms (https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2201014119), Lotta talked about cytoskeletal intermediate filaments (https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/5.0099405) and Tom showed his work about stress granules in biological cells (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-022-01537-8).

Simon's, Robert's and Rob’s paper titled “Hydroelastomers: soft, tough, highly swelling composites“ has just been published in Soft Matter. The paper is based on Simon's Master's thesis in our lab!

Embedding highly swelling hydrogel particles inside tough, water-permeable, elastomeric matrices results in composites, which are called hydroelastomers. Find out more about the properties of these composites here: https://pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticleLanding/2022/SM/D2SM00946C

Maria gave a talk titled "Frustrated Frustules: Geometric Frustration in Diatom Frustules" at the GRC for Biomineralization (https://www.grc.org/biomineralization-conference/2022/) about her work on diatoms. To find out more see paper here: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2201014119

Rob gave a talk titled "Soft, tough, highly water-swelling composites" at the International Conference for Bioinspired Materials in Andermatt. Simon's and Rob's manuscript: https://arxiv.org/abs/2203.17131

Maria’s paper on the artistic patterns of the cell wall of diatoms formed by phase separation is published in PNAS.

For a long time, people have been fascinated by the patterns formed in diatoms. We describe a family of unusual patterns of holes across a number of related diatom species. While we are not aware of other natural occurrences of these patterns, they are very similar to the pattern of stitches in a crocheted hat. Find out more with the link!

https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.220101411

Dominic's and Rob’s paper titled “Stress accumulation around ice in a temperature gradient“ has just been published in PNAS. They tracked the deformation of a silicon gel below growing ice with unprecedented spatial esolution to better understand how freezing damage arises. If you would like to find out more about freezing damage, how stresses by ice growth build up and how this depends on the temperature gradient, see the link below.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10.1073/pnas.2200748119

New Bachelor's and Master's students joined the lab.

Welcome to our new Bachelor's and Master's students! Sanjay, Jemma, Keno, Zuzanna and Deborah (left to right) will be working on different topics including liquid-liquid phase separation, stress granules in biological cells and microtubules.

Congrats! Andrea successfully defended his thesis on June 21st.

Andrea presented his work on biomimetic, active protein droplets. Evan Spruijt from Radboud University and Lucio Isa from the SMI Lab were present for the discussion.

Here the link to Andrea's paper: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-26532-0

Congrats!

Hendrik successfully defended his thesis on June 16th. Congrats!

Hendrik presented his work on wrapping of microparticles by lipid membranes. Daniela Kraft from Leiden University was present for the discussion.

Here the links to Hendrik's publications: 
https://journals.aps.org/prresearch/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.4.023080
https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.125.198102

Congratulations Hendrik!

Maria gave a talk at the Materials Colloquium, the talk series organized by the departmental association SAM.

Maria presented her research on diatoms that has been recently published on a pre-print, that you can find at this link: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.10.472144v1

If you want to know more about the seminar series, check out the website of SAM here: https://sam.mat.ethz.ch/mc2022/

Hendrik’s paper on the dynamics of particle wrapping floppy lipid vesicles has just been published.

In collaboration with Jaime Agudo-Canalejo from the Max-Planck Institute in Göttingen, this paper explores the dynamics of the wrapping process that particles undergo when encountering lipid membranes. The rate-determining step seems to be dissipation at the contact line, but there's more to it!

You find the paper here: https://journals.aps.org/prresearch/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.4.023080

A new paper, resulting from a collaboration with Mike Murrell's group, has been recently published in Physical Review Fluids.

The paper describes the Marangoni-like motion in cell aggregates which is driven by gradients of surface tension.

It is the result of a collaboration culminated with Mike spending one year in our laboratory for a sabbatical.

Check out more here: (https://livingmatter.yale.edu/), and the paper here: https://journals.aps.org/prfluids/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevFluids.7.L031101

Carla and Nico gave two talks during the 29th edition of the Swiss Soft Days, the biannual conference organized by the Swiss soft matter community.

The Swiss Soft Days is a one-day workshop taking place 2 times per year where around 20 speakers give short talks to introduce their research activities in a way specifically designed for a heterogeneous public.

This edition took place at the Paul Scherrer Institute. For more information, visit this link: https://swisssoftdays.ethz.ch/

Some pictures from out lab's boot at Nachtaktiv, the outreach event organized by CreativelabZ.

For more information about the event, check out our previous news item (https://softliv.mat.ethz.ch/Soft_and_living_materials_NEWS/2022/03/nachaktiv-outreach-event.html) and the CreativelabZ website (https://creativelabz.ch/nachtaktiv/).

Andrea's paper is in the top 25 most read articles in the category Chemistry and Materials Sciences in Nature Communications in 2021. 

The article was in the top 25 among more than 7000 articles published by the journal in 2021. Congrats to Andrea and co-authors for the great achievement!

Check out the full list at the following link (https://www.nature.com/collections/.....), and the original paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26532-0

We are on Twitter! The laboratory of Soft and Living Materials Twitter account (@SoftLiv_ETH) is finally here.

Check it out to know the latest news from our group, or the most interesting papers in the field!

You can find more at the following link: https://twitter.com/SoftLiv_ETH

Jin Young's paper has been highlighted in the Physical Review X "Highlights in Experimental Statistical, Biological, and Soft-Matter Physics" collection.

The collection aims to highlight the most recent and significant experimental papers published by PRX.

Jin Young's paper (https://journals.aps.org/prx/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevX.11.031004) has been added to the collection for the development of a novel approach.

Full collection: https://journals.aps.org/prx/collection/2022/EXP-STAT-BIO-SM-PHYSICS

A new paper from Tom and co-authors, recently published in Nature Physics, uncovers how membraneless organelles interact with the cytoskeleton.

In the paper Tom and co-authors focused on stress granules, which are protein-mRNA droplets the human cell forms in response to harmful environmental conditions.

Dysfunction of such protein condensation, is believed to be a main cause for neurodegenerative diseases such as ALS and Alzheimer's disease.

Paper https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-022-01537-8

Our lab will participate at the Nachtaktiv outreach event on March 31st, with a stand on structural color.

Nachtaktiv (https://creativelabz.ch/nachtaktiv/) is a series of events geared towards youth and young adults that explores the intersection of science, technology, and artistic expression.

The coming event on March 31st will be focused on the theme of art and color, and will be co-organised by the Kunsthaus museum in Zürich.

Charlotta Lorenz joins the Soft and Living Materials group as a postdoctoral researcher.

Lotta earned her Bachelor and Master degrees in Physics at the University of Göttingen (Germany) and the University of California, Santa Barbara (USA). She finished her PhD on interactions within and between cytoskeletal filaments at the University of Göttingen in 2021.

Heinrich, Deborah and Anja will work in the lab in the next few months.

They will work with Gianna, Aleks, Katie and Tom on various project in our lab.

Welcome!

Shaohua Yang, a PhD student from Professor Ye Xu’s lab at Beihang University, will join our lab for one year. 

Shaohua will work on the experimental study of the fracture and adhesion of soft materials, together with Rob and Dominic.

Welcome, Shaohua!

For more information about Beihang University, follow this link: https://ev.buaa.edu.cn/index.htm

Etienne Jambon-Puillet joins the Soft and Living Materials group as a Postdoctoral researcher.

Etienne earned an engineering degree and physics MSc at ESPCI Paris, and then a PhD in mechnical engineering at UPMC in Paris. He later got a Postdoc from the department of physics in the university of Amsterdam and then in chemical and biological engineering in Princeton University.

You can find more about him at his personal website: https://ejambonpuillet.wordpress.com/

Welcome Etienne!

Simon has received the Silver Medal of ETH Zurich for an Outstanding Master thesis at the Master celebration of the Materials Department.

The highly competitive prize (https://ethz.ch/en/the-eth-zurich/education/awards/eth-medal.html) rewards the 50 best master theses of the year from the whole ETH, and it also includes a money prize.

The awarded work was performed in our lab under Rob's supervision.

Congrats Simon!

Stefanie and co-authors propose a new approach for the measurement of the surface elastic constants of soft solids, in their new paper recently published on "Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids".

In their work, the authors exploit phase separated systems of liquid droplets embedded in soft solids to robustly quantify surface elastic constants in the small deformation regime. You can find the article here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022509622000096?via%3Dihub

Congratulations! Mahdiye Ijavi successfully defended her PhD thesis on December 6th.

Mahdiye presented her work on the measurement of physical properties of biological condensates in the first in-person defence of our lab.

Congratulations Mahdiye!

Congrats Carla! Carla has been awarded the ETH Postdoctoral Fellowship, which aims at supporting young postdoctoral candidates with excellent scientific record.

You can find more about the ETH Postdoctoral Fellowship at this link: https://ethz.ch/en/research/research-promotion/eth-fellowships.html

Carla and co-authors published a Perspective on JACS Au, with the title "Putting the squeeze on phase separation".

In this work, leverging the expertise built in the lab, the authors review the most prominent body of work on arrested phase separation and discuss the challenges and opportunities in the field.

Check out the full text here: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/jacsau.1c00443

The Research Fellowship for Women in Science (https://www.bioinspired-materials.ch/en/education/postdoctoral-training/fellowship-for-women-in-science.html) of the Swiss National Center of Competence in Research (NCCR) (https://www.bioinspired-materials.ch/en/) Bio-Inspired Materials seeks to support the professional development of outstanding female researchers who have already demonstrated excellence at an early stage of their careers and wish to pursue an academic career.

Marlène Saulais, a PhD student from the LGP2 lab at the University of Grenoble Alpes, will join our lab for three months to work on structural color.

Marlène, which is working on a project about polysaccharide-based materials for structural pigments (https://lgp2.grenoble-inp.fr/fr/annuaire/mme-marlene-saulais), will work with Sai and Alba.

Welcome, Marlène!

The surface tension of soft silicone gels changes with deformation state in the new paper from Nicolas and co-authors, recently published in Physical Review Letters.

Surface tension is the driving force of a plethora of small- scale phenomena. In liquids, it is responsible for the spherical shape of small drops and for the shape of menisci. Growing interest in soft solids for applications in microsystems and robotics.

Paper: https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.127.208001

Yanxia Feng joins the lab as a doctoral student.

Originally from China, Yanxia got her B.S in Materials Science at Nanjing University in China in 2019. She then obtained her Master degree from Department of Materials at ETH in 2021. She carried out both of her master projects in the group, where she found herself fascinated with the mechanical behavior of soft materials. After her graduation, she thus decided to join the group as a PhD student.

Welcome, Yanxia!

Artificial protein droplets mimic living systems in the new paper from Andrea and co-authors, recently published on Nature Communications.

In this paper, realized in collaboration with researchers from the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (https://groups.oist.jp/protein) and Max Plank Institute (https://www.ds.mpg.de/lmp), Andrea and his co-authors introduce a protein droplets system.

Paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26532-0

We organised an in-person retreat in the Swiss Alps last September. A two-days event rich of personal and scientific discussions, fun moments and workshops! 

After skipping the 2020 edition due to Covid-19 restrictions, we were finally able to meet in person again for the lab retreat this year, on the beautiful setting of Lake Lucern. During the two days event we discussed several topics relevant to the lab's life, organized workshops and also had a lot fun with pub quiz and hikes!

The photos of the exhibition of our laboratory at Scientifica 2021.

For more information about Scientifica and our boot there, visit this link: https://softliv.mat.ethz.ch/Soft_and_living_materials_NEWS/2021/08/outreach-event.html

Sai and Yasir's paper has been published on Small. In this work Yasir and Sai, demonstrate a simple method to dramatically increase the refractive index of commercial polymers, loading them with plant-based pigments.

Polymers are widely employed in nanostructured materials because they can self-assemble into a wide variety of well-controlled structures. 

Living systems can achieve very high refractive indices using organic pigments.

Paper: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/smll.202103061

Nan Xue joined the lab as postdoctoral researcher.

Nan obtained his B.S. in Engineering Mechanics from Tsinghua University, China, in 2015. He then studied and worked on fluid mechanics problems (most are gravity-induced flows, in theories and experiments) in Princeton Univerisity, U.S.A., and obtained his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering in 2021.

Welcome Nan!

Katrina gave a talk at the beginning of September at the opening event for Scientifica 2021 (https://scientifica.ch/en/). Through her talk, the audience learned about structural color, both in nature and lab. She showcased Alba’s work (https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2021/SM/D1SM00210D) and got people excited about other fun applications of structural color, like structurally colored chocolate.

Photo credit: Alessandro Della Bella

Nicolas gave a talk during a workshop at Les Houches Summer School organised by the GDR MePhy (Mécanique et Physique des Systèmes Complexes).

The workshop aimed to connect doctoral and postdoctoral students interested in the mechanics and physics of interfaces. The MePhy is a research group that aims to connect physicists and mechanics. You can find more information about the workshop here: (https://blog.espci.fr/mephy/2021-3/), and about MePhy here: (https://blog.espci.fr/mephy/)-(in French).

The lab will participate at Scientifica 2021, the outreach event from ETH Zürich and the University of Zürich where you can touch by hand the science done in Zürich!

The lab will be present with an exhibition about structural color at the Irchel campus of the University of Zürich.

If you want to know more, click this link: https://scientifica.ch/en/ausstellungen/leuchtend-und-haltbar-strukturelle-farben/

If you would like know more about Scientifica, click this link: https://scientifica.ch/en/

Carla Fernandez Rico joins the Soft and Living Materials Group as a postdoctoral researcher

Carla studied Nanoscience at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, and subsequently completed a Masters degree in Nanomaterial at Utrecht University. In 2017, she joined the Oxford Colloid Group as PhD student under the supervision of Prof. Roel Dullens. After having successfully defended her PhD, Carla joins the group to work on structural colour and elastically controlled phase separation phenomena.

Rob gave a talk at the International Webinar on Gels and Networks, organised by the University of Tokyo.

Rob's talk was about controlling phase separation with elastic networks.

You can find more information about it at the this link: http://www.fp.a.u-tokyo.ac.jp/lab/sozai/20210708%20Dr%20Rob%20Style.pdf

In a new paper in PRX, Jinyoung Kim and his co-authors have demonstrated a new way to overcome contact angle hysteresis for soft materials.

They measured microscopic deformations underneath a droplet, and used these to measure equilibrium surface properties of a soft hydrogel. They hope that this technique will further give insight into the physics of wetting and the problem of how hysteresis arises on soft materials.

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevX.11.031004

Andrea won the prize for "Best Image" at the MaP Symposium 2021, with a picture of time projections of fluorescent nanoparticles, showing the flow lines inside a droplet under an external gradient.

In addition, Andrea also had a talk at the symposium, together with Alba.

You can find more information about the MaP Graduate Symposium at this link: https://map.ethz.ch/news-events/events-formats/grad-symp.html

Eric’s collaborators Vinod Saranathan and Richard Prum, have recently discovered the first three dimensional photonic crystals made from protein. 

A team of researchers comprising of longtime's Eric collaborators Vinod Saranathan and Richard Prum discovered the first three dimensional photonic crystals made from protein in the feather barbs of blue-winged leafbirds.

More about it in the Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences. Link: https://www.pnas.org/content/118/23/e2101357118

In Alba's paper, structural color emerges spontaneously in one step thanks to phase-separation in the solid state.

In this work, Alba developed a self-limiting approach to polymerization-induced phase separation to obtain structural color in polymeric materials of any shape and size. This research was carried out in collaboration with Empa, and with contributions from researchers from ETH, PSI, Yale and Yale-NUS.

DOI https://doi.org/10.1039/D1SM00210D

Droplets race to the finish: Katrina’s work demonstrating anisotropic wetting on soft, stretched substrates has just been published in Physical Review Letters.

Anisotropic wetting is typically achieved, both in nature and the lab, via involved topographical or chemical patterning of surfaces. 

Find out more here: (https://physics.aps.org/articles/v14/s49), the full text (https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.126.158004)!

Tom gave a talk at the German Physical Society (DPG) Spring Meeting 2021.

He represented the lab with a joint talk about phase separation in polymer networks together with the Zwicker Group (https://www.zwickergroup.org/) from MPI DS in Göttingen.

For more information about the 2021 DPG Spring Meeting visit this link (https://bpcppdysoe21.dpg-tagungen.de/).

The Laboratory of Soft and Living Materials will participate at the 2021 APS March Meeting! The conference, organized by the American Physical Society, will happen from March 15th to March 19th, and will see several presentations from our lab members. 

In particular, Mahdiye, Andrea, Hendrik and Tom. Alba, Nico and Katrina  and Maria. Most of the presentations will be recorded and will be visible clicking on the links above.

Check out the full: (https://march.aps.org/scientific-program/#sunday).

Nico gave a talk for the weekly seminar at Laboratoire Ondes et Matière d’Aquitaine (LOMA) at Bordeaux University.

The title of the talk was " Surface tension and the strain-dependent topography of soft solids", the result of Nico's work on surface elasticity.

Simon, Namita, Xueting and Muriel will work in the lab!

They will work with Rob, Maria, Aleks and Katrina on various projects in our laboratory. 

Mike Murrell, associate professor of biomedical engineering from the Yale School of Engineering and Applied Science, will be doing a sabbatical in our lab.

Mike’s research focusses mainly on the study of cell mechanics and the design of biomimetic systems to both understand and exploit the mechanical principles governing tissue and cellular behaviour. He is going to spend a year in our lab.

Welcome Mike!

Stefanie's work on the theoretical modeling of anisotropic surface stresses has been published in Proceedings of the Royal Society A.

In this paper, fully analytical solutions for the deformation of a stretched soft substrate due to the static wetting of a large liquid droplet are derived.

Find paper here: (https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspa.2020.0673)

Mahdiye’s work on surface tensiometry of phase separated liquid droplets has been published in Soft Matter.

In this paper, the classical sessile droplet method for measuring the surface tension of liquids has been scaled down to measure the interfacial tension between coexisting phases of polymers and proteins phase separated droplets. 

Find paper here: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspa.2020.0673

Qin’s work on the surface relaxation mechanisms of soft solids has just been published in Physical Review Letters.

With the help of a home-built interference microscope, the work directly measures the de-wetting induced surface relaxations on soft silicone gels. 

Find paper here: https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.125.238002

Hendrik’s paper on the wrapping of microparticles by floppy lipid membranes has just been published in Physical Review Letters.

In collaboration with groups from Bayreuth and the Max-Planck Institute in Göttingen.

You can find more information about the paper at this link (https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.125.198102) as well as an article about the paper in Physics Magazine at this link (https://physics.aps.org/articles/v13/s143).

After finishing his master's studies with a joint research internship project between CEA Saclay and École Centrale Supélec in France, Tianchi Li joins our group as a doctoral student.

He will work on the numerical analysis of fracture mechanisms in soft solids.

Welcome Tianchi!

Rob and Jinyoung’s review paper on soft solid/liquid composites has just been published in Advanced Functional Materials.

The paper was written in collaboration with the Bartlett lab at Virginia Tech and it is available at the following link (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/adfm.202005804).

Yasir joins the group of Soft and Living Materials as a postdoctoral researcher.

Yasir did his Bachelor’s and Master’s in Industrial Chemistry from Aligarh Muslim University, India. He then joined University of Fribourg, Switzerland for a PhD on olefin oetathesis polymerization. In his postdoc research at ETH Zurich, he will work on photonic crystals made from block copolymers.

Welcome Yasir!

Congratulations! Paolo Testa successfully defended his PhD thesis on July 14th.

The thesis, Magneto-Mechanical Properties of a Magnetic Fluid-Silicone Composite, encompasses Paolo's three and half years of work on magnetically addressable soft composites in a collaboration between our lab and the Mesoscopic System laboratory (https://mesosys.mat.ethz.ch/) in D-MATL.

Congratulations Paolo!

Paolo has published how a composite elastomer filled with droplets of magnetic fluid demonstrates magnetically switchable adhesion. Katie’s paper assesses how compressive stresses from a polymer network can reverse the direction of Ostwald ripening. These are both part of a themed collection that was guest-edited by Rob and Prof. Michael Bartlett (Iowa State University)

Collection: (https://pubs.rsc.org/en/journals/articlecollectionlanding?sercode=sm&themeid=dc9c5e9a-f6c2-41db-a91f-4bf157c233a2)

Aleks joins the group of Soft and Living Materials from May 1st as a postdoctoral researcher. 

While in the lab, he will study the material properties of biological liquid crystals such as lipid bilayer membranes. His research aims to find new approaches to shape and mechanically modulate these materials in a test tube, while retaining key features of their intricate architectures as found in living cells.

Welcome Aleks!

During these socially distant times, the Soft and Living Materials group keeps in touch virtually!

We’re continuing our weekly group meeting (now online!), updating each other on our scientific progress and keeping in touch.

Below a virtual selfie of our last group meeting.

Jinyoung’s paper on cavitation in soft solids has just been published in Science Advances.

In collaboration with groups from MIT, Cornell and SKKU in South Korea, this paper explores how failure in soft, stretchy elastomers has a lot more in common with failure in ductile metals than might be expected.

You can find more information about the paper at this link: https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/13/eaaz0418

Guido gave a lecture with the title “Time and relative dimension in self-assembly: towards a systems chemistry of materials” at the Materials Colloquium 2020.

Guido showcased the results of two years of research on materials programming by means of chemical clocks.

The Materials Colloquium is a seminar organized by SAM, the Scientific Staff Association at the Department of Materials (https://sam.ethz.ch/).

Six new students will work in the lab in the next few weeks.

Liliane (front row, left) and Pascal (second row, right) will perform their bachelor thesis with Sai and Maria.

Michael (second row, center) will work for his bachelor thesis with Rob, and Solenn (front row, right) for her master thesis with Guido. 

Finally, Ueli (second row, left) will do a master project with Guido and Rob, and Daniel (not in the picture) will work at his bachelor thesis with Hendrik.

Welcome!

The Laboratory of Soft and Living Materials organized an outreach activity for the Freies Gymnasium Zürich about the science behind chocolate tempering and structural colour.

The students learnt how to control the crystallization of cocoa butter to obtain the right texture in chocolate. 

To know more, follow this link: (https://ethz.ch/en/news-and-events/eth-news/news/2019/12/shimmering-chocolate.html).

Polymers put the squeeze on liquid droplets in the latest paper from Katie and Sai, published on Nature Physics.

In this work, Katie and Sai demonstrate how elastic networks can control the nucleation and ripening of encapsulated droplets.

Find paper here: (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-019-0767-2.epdf?author_access_token=ionkrJaR4DvLKOn-BmPSFNRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0PDg1obRW8VBfinxMOrCzUU3-NRKk0jqaNzioFB-b3huNFvd9niFWcjLcoHwsQVb-4SoImzwqR6uiDvVYa1SdPD9ZiSQ0ZlPY2w1GM9XUL0nA%3D%3D).

Congratulations Guido! His work on the time-domain programming of self-assembly with chemical clocks has been recently published in two subsequent papers: "Supramolecular assembly by time-programmed acid autocatalysis"  (https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2020/ME/C9ME00139E#!divAbstract), and "Transient supramolecular assembly of a functional perylene diimide controlled by a programmable pH cycle" (https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2020/SM/C9SM02026H#!divAbstract).  

The Laboratory of Soft and Living Materials has won new funding to support research at the interface between materials physics and cell biology.  

This project will be funded by the Sinergia progam, and will be performed in collaboration with (https://bc.biol.ethz.ch/research/barral.html) and Michel Steinmetz of (https://www.psi.ch/en/lbr).

Sinergia grants are awarded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. Learn more here: (http://www.snf.ch/en/funding/programmes/sinergia/Pages/default.aspx).

The laboratory of Soft and Living Materials wishes you happy holidays!

Thanks to Tom for creating this awesome science-inspired holiday card, and greetings from all the group members!

Guido, Maria and Qin presented posters at Materials Day, the symposium organized by the Materials Department of ETH Zürich every two years.

This year's symposium had the title: Modeling: Across Scales, Across Materials, and involved the presence of several invited speakers, poster sessions, prizes and more. 

Visit this link (https://www.materialsday.ethz.ch/) to find out more information about Materials Day.

We have a new lab logo!  

The Soft and Living Materials group held an internal contest to design the new lab logo. Sai and Alex won the popular vote, and they worked together to bring the logo to life.

Thanks to them for the hard work, to Mahdiye for organizing the contest, and to everyone who participated in the design process.

Below, the new logo in high resolution.

Congrats Maria!  Maria was awarded the "Best Presentation" prize at the Bionspired Materials conference in Monte Verità, Switzerland.

The title of the presentation was "How do diatoms create three-dimensional silica structures?". 

The Bioinspired Materials conference aims to bring together scientists from all over the world in discussing how to design new materials inspired by Nature. Eric, Guido and Sai also attended the conference. 

Andrea was awarded the Strategic Fellowship for Research in Japan. The grant is provided by the Japanese Society for Promotion of Science, which supplies funding for foreign scientists to pursue their research in Japan.

The grant is part of the Japanese - Swiss Young Researcher Exchange Program. Andrea won the fellowship as part of a collaboration between our lab and the Okinawa Institute of Technology (OIST) (https://www.oist.jp/).

Congrats Stefanie!  Stefanie has been awarded an Ambizione grant from the SNSF for the proposal titled "Multi-scale modelling of size effects in the fracture of soft solids."

The project aims for a fundamental understanding of the microstructural processes, and the resulting macroscopic behaviour, of fracture in soft matter.

 To know more, visit: http://www.snf.ch/en/funding/careers/ambizione/Pages/default.aspx

Our laboratory was involved in the organization of the exhibition "Nanostructures show their true colours" for European Heritage Days 2019, aimed at showing to the public how living creatures exploit structure to create colour.

Why are butterflies so colourful and why do some colours never fade? The exhibition was co-organized with the NCCR Bio-Inspired Materials (https://www.bioinspired-materials.ch/en/) and the Entomological Collection of ETH Zürich.

Guido has been elected president of the Swiss Young Chemists’ Association.

The Swiss Young Chemists’ Association (SYCA) of the Swiss Chemical Society is a network of young researchers (aged under 35) in all areas of chemistry, and has around 400 members. The election took place during the General Assembly of the SYCA last Friday, September 6, at Irchel Campus.

For more information about the SYCA and the Swiss Chemical Society (SCS), you can follow this link (https://scg.ch/index.php?lang=en).

The laboratory went on a lab outing playing Hornussen, a traditional sport that is played in the Swiss countryside. 

In today's setup, the "batsman" hits the puck, or "Nouss", with an elastic stick from the starting block towards the opponents' field. There, the members of the defending team try to intercept the Nouss as early as possible before it hits the ground. To do this they use "Schindel", shovel-like boards held high or thrown into the air to meet the Nouss.

Alex, Eric, Guido and Sai attended the NCCR Bio-Inspired Materials Annual Center Conference (ACC) this Monday and Tuesday in Charmey, Switzerland.

The conference is organized by the National Center of Competence in Research (NCCR) Bio-Inspired Materials, a research center between the University of Fribourg, and the Federal Institutes of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) and Zurich (ETHZ), and aims to establish an internationally recognized hub for smart materials research, education, and innovation.

The second lab scavenger hunt happened this Saturday.

Three teams partecipated in the event: scAvengers, The Saientists and Maniacal Laugh. Each team was given several clues and puzzles to solve to find the right way through the city, leading to the final destination and victory.

Congratulations to Maniacal Laugh for winning and thanks to Alba for organizing!

Guido and Tom participated to two conferences. In particular, Tom was at the Gordon Research Conference (GRC) on Soft Condensed Matter Physics, close to Boston, USA. Guido is at the Conference on Molecular Systems Engineering (ICMSE 2019) in Nijmegen, the Netherlands.

Tom presented a poster on phase separation inside cells, while Guido  gave a talk with the title "Why materials science needs systems chemistry". 

Eric and Rob gave talks while visiting laboratories in the US and Germany.

Katie and Sai’s paper on phase separation in elastic networks is now on the arXiv. 

The pre-print, "Elastic ripening and inhibition of liquid-liquid phase separation,” shows how the phase separation behavior of liquid droplets is dominated by the elasticity of the surrounding network. It can be found on the arXiv website (https://arxiv.org/abs/1907.08465). Congratulations to Katie, Sai, Rob and Eric!

Several students will work in our lab throughout summer, as they will be involved in bachelor theses, master projects and master theses. 

Some of them are from ETH, while others are from Freiburg and the UK. Welcome to the laboratory!

Dominic won the 3rd place prize for "Best image" at the MaP Symposium 2019, with a picture of calcium carbonate crystals.

Additionally, Paolo and Hendrik gave talks at the Symposium. Below, the full width image, winner of the prize. Congrats Domi!

Frank Scheffold visited our lab, as well as other groups in the ETH Materials Department, on June 26th. He collaborates with us on bio-inspired optical materials as part of an NCCR Bio-Inspired Materials project.

 To learn more, check out NCCR Bio-Insipred Materials website (https://www.bioinspired-materials.ch/en/) and the Soft Matter and Photonics Group website (https://www3.unifr.ch/phys/en/research/groups/scheffold/) at the UniFR.

Three new students (Greta, Maddalena and Sabrina) joined our lab and will stay with us until the end of the summer. 

Greta, a bachelor student from the UK, will work with Alba on structural color - her project is sponsored by a NCCR grant. Maddalena, a master student from ETH, will work with Rob on cristallization inside hydrogels. Sabrina, also a master student from ETH, will work with Paolo on the properties of soft magnetic materials. 

The Soft and Living Materials annual lab retreat happened last weekend! We went to Melchtal, in the Swiss Alps, to discuss the group mission and how we are doing as a lab. 

Sunday was dedicated to fun activities like hiking, driving trottinettes down the mountain and enjoying some relaxation in the hot tub. Monday was instead dedicated to scientific discussion. Thanks to Alba and Stefanie for organizing this great weekend!

Eric gave a keynote lecture at the International Soft Matter Conference 2019 in Edinburgh with the title "Phase-separation in an elastic matrix: from living cells to synthetic materials".

Rob and Hendrik also gave talks at the conference, with the titles "Small-scale fracture in soft solids" and "Dynamics of membrane wrapping of microparticles" respectively. Additionally, Dominic, Alba and Tom presented posters.

Congrats Paolo! Paolo's work on shape memory magnetic soft gels has been published on the Advanced Materials.

The article concerns the creation of a soft magnetic shape‐memory composite by embedding droplets of magneto‐rheological fluid into a soft elastomeric matrix. Read more on the PSI website (https://www.psi.ch/en/media/our-research/new-material-with-magnetic-shape-memory), complete article on the Advanced Materials website (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/adma.201900561).

Congrats Nico! Nicolas has won an ETH Zurich Postdoctoral Fellowships that supports incoming postdoctoral researchers at ETH Zurich.

The programme is intended to foster young researchers who have already demonstrated scientific excellence in the early stages of their careers, as an early support towards academic independence.

Guido will represent our lab at the Gordon Research Seminar (GRS) and Conference (GRC) on Self-Assembly and Supramolecular Chemistry at Les Diablerets, Switzerland.

The conference and related seminar will be held from May 19th to 24th. Guido has been chosen as Discussion Leader for the session "Functional Interfaces and Materials" at the GRS, and he is presenting a poster for both the GRS and GRC with the title "Time-controlled supramolecular gelation" .

Margarita Staykova, from Durham University, will be visiting our lab from May 12th to May 18th. She is interested in lipid bilayers.

Margarita leads a newly formed group in soft matter, whose objectives are to understand the functional principles of biological membranes and capture them in artificially designed smart interfaces.
They use engineering approaches and optical tools for quantitative measurements. They are part of the Biophysical Sciences Institute and the Durham Center for Soft Matter.

Larry Wilen, Senior Research Scientist from the Yale School of Engineering and Applied Science, will be visiting our lab.

He will stay with us for the whole month of May.

Dr. Judit Horvath will visit our lab April 24th to 26th.

She is a Marie Curie fellow at the University of Sheffield (UK) and will give a talk on April 25th with the title "Chemical and Chemomechanical Morphogenesis in Far-from-Equilibrium Systems".

Anand Jagota, professor and founding chair of the bioengineering program at Lehigh University, will be visiting our lab in March and April.

His research interests are in biomaterials, biomechanics, and nanobiotechnology. His group works on properties, processing, and modeling of DNA interactions with nanomaterials, specifically on its hybrids with carbon nanotubes. He also has interests in nanomechanics, biomechanics, adhesion and friction.

Four bachelor students (Benoit, Leila, Magali and Silvan) have joined the lab to work on their theses, and are going to stay with us until the end of June. 

Benoit and Leila will work with Andrea on building gradient chambers and making magnetic, motile microdroplets respectively; Magali will work with Alba to make make structurally colored materials, and Silvan will work with Maria to analyze silica nanostructures of living organisms.

Welcome Nico! The laboratory of Soft and Living Materials welcomes Nicolas Bain, a new postdoctoral researcher.

He will study surface tension in solid materials. He completed his PhD in the Physics department at the ENS de Lyon, under the supervision of Denis Bartolo. There, he focused on the large-scale dynamics of human crowds, which he studied with an active matter physicist’s point of view.