Red blood cells under shear flow present a specific swinging motion superimposed to a fluid-like tanktreading motion. Swinging is hypothesized to originate from periodic storage of shear energy in the cell membrane. Here we designed giant unilamellar vesicles with two lipid phases separated by a contact line, which swing and tanktread like red cells. We propose a model that quantitatively fits our data, finds the value of the contact-line tension and shows that swinging is due to the storage of elastic energy associated with the periodic modulation of the contact-line length during tanktreading.

The addition of nanoparticles to a polymermatrix is a well-known process to improve the mechanicalproperties of polymers. Many studies of mechanical reinforcementin polymer nanocomposites (PNCs) focus on rubberymatrices; however, much less effort concentrates on thefactors controlling the mechanical performance of thetechnologically important glassy PNCs. This paper presentsa study of the effect of the polymer molecular weight (MW)on the overall mechanical properties of glassy PNCs withattractive interaction by using Brillouin light scattering. Wefound that the mechanical moduli (bulk and shear) have anonmonotonic dependence on MW that cannot be predictedby simple rule of mixtures. The moduli increase with increasing MW up to 100 kg/mol followed by a drop at higher MW. Wedemonstrate that the change in the mechanical properties of PNCs can be associated with the properties of the interfacialpolymer layer. The latter depend on the interfacial chain packing and stretching, as well as polymer bridging,which vary differently with the MW of the polymer. These competing contributions lead to the observed nonmonotonicvariations of the glassy PNC moduli with MW. Our work provides a simple, cost-effective, and efficient way to control themechanical properties of glassy PNCs by tuning the polymer chain length. Our finding can be beneficial for the rational designof PNCs with desired mechanical performance.

The possibility to impart surface properties to any polymeric substrate using a fast, reproducible, and industrially friendly procedure, without the need for surface pretreatment, is highly sought after. This is in particular true in the frame of antibacterial surfaces to hinder the threat of biofilm formation. In this study, the potential of aryl‐azide polymers for photofunctionalization and the importance of the polymer structure for an efficient grafting are demonstrated. The strategy is illustrated with a UV‐reactive hydrophilic poly(2‐oxazoline) based copolymer, which can be photografted onto any polymer substrate that contains carbon–hydrogen bonds to introduce antifouling properties. Through detailed characterization it is demonstrated that the controlled spatial distribution of the UV‐reactive aryl‐azide moieties within the poly(2‐oxazline) structure, in the form of pseudogradient copolymers, ensures higher grafting efficacy than other copolymer structures including block copolymers. Furthermore, it is found that the photografting results in a covalently bound layer, which is thermally stable and causes a significant antiadherence effect and biofilm reduction against Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus epidermidis strains while remaining noncytotoxic against mouse fibroblasts.

Surface-inactive, highly hydrophilic particles are utilized to effectively and reversibly stabilize oil-in-water emulsions. This is a result of attractive van der Waals forces between particles and oil droplets in water, which are sufficient to trap the particles in close proximity to oil–water interfaces when repulsive forces between particles and oil droplets are suppressed. The emulsifying efficiency of the highly hydrophilic particles is determined by van der Waals attraction between particle monolayer shells and oil droplets enclosed therein and is inversely proportional to the particle size, while their stabilizing efficiency is determined by van der Waals attraction between single particles and oil droplets, which is proportional to the particle size. This differentiation in mechanism between emulsification and stabilization will significantly advance our knowledge of emulsions, thus enabling better control and design of emulsion-based technologies in practice.

A novel and simple method for the measurement of cloud point temperatures of solutions is presented. Cloud point determination , which is currently used to establish the phase diagrams of protein solutions, is indicative of proteins interactions and constitutes a useful tool for food products engineering. We describe a novel experimental setup that allows screening of a large number of physical-chemical conditions in one measurement and the determination of cloud point temperatures both above and below ambient temperature. We use a simple method to avoid solvent evaporation and condensation, so that the setup can be used for solutions prepared with a volatile solvent. We present the operating parameter range and the precision of the measurement. The optical properties of the system are calibrated with solutions of known transmittance, and the determination of cloud point temperatures is validated on a standard non-ionic surfactant solution. Finally, we demonstrate the efficiency of the method by determining the phase diagram of a wheat protein extract, soluble in a water/ethanol mixture. Complemented with differential scanning calorimetry measurements, the liquid-liquid phase transition can be determined up to a protein concentration of 250 g/L, a range inaccessible with conventional methods for this protein extract.

We report measurements and theoretical predictions on the effect of an aligning magnetic field on the orientational disorder of a nematic liquid crystal in contact with isotropic solid substrates. Different types of substrates present a similar disorder and a similar dependency on the magnetic field amplitude, i.e. a decreasing of the angular distribution widths and spatial correlation lengths. Measurements are in qualitative agreement with a theory where the orientational disorder emerges from the competition between the aligning magnetic torque and the disorienting thermal fluctuations during the adsorption of the liquid crystal molecules on the substrate.