Journal of chemical physics published an article by Rudolf Podgornik and coworkers, Perspective: Coulomb fluids—Weak coupling, strong coupling, in between and beyond, which was incorporated in its »Spotlight collection«. A figure from the paper ended up on the cover of the journal, the article itself was the most read paper of the journal in the month of November. The paper deals with the state of knowledge of Coulomb fluids such as electrolytes, plasmas and defines a completely new direction of research in the theory of strong coupling of these systems. It has important repercussions for colloid science, nanoscale interactions and interactions in biological systems.
COBISS.SI-ID: 2604388
We use a spring-and-plaquette network model to analyze the repulsion between elastic disks in contact. By studying various 2D geometries, we find that as disks approach the incompressibility limit the manybody effects become dominant and the disk-disk interaction is not pairwise additive. Upon compression, the disks undergo a transition from the localized to the distributed deformation regime accompanied by a steep increase of energy consistent with the onset of a hard core. These results shed new light on the structures formed by deformable objects such as soft nanocolloids.
COBISS.SI-ID: 26763815
Membrane bending is an essential step in many physiological cellular processes. In this paper we provide a detailed overview of a recently discovered non-specific role of membrane proteins in this process, which involves crowding of asymmetrically distributed membrane proteins with large extra-membrane domains. The proteins can be described as a hard sphere gas and membrane bending is associated with compression or expansion of this gas. Because cellular membranes are abundant with protein, this mechanism is important for many physiological processes in the cell.
COBISS.SI-ID: 30811097
By using x-ray diffraction and microscopy we have investigated morphology and structure of different phases of organic semiconductor 5,11-bis- (triethylsilylethynyl) anthradithiophene (TES ADT). By using time-of-flight measurements of holes in thin film transistors we have determined their mobility. Our findings show a crucial dependence of crystal structure and consequently their electronic properties on growth conditions. The highest mobility was acheived in alpha-phase crystals of TES-ADT.
COBISS.SI-ID: 2731515
We have shown that achiral liquid crystalline materials in the B4 phase exhibit strong gelation ability for various organic solvents. The B4 phase is a phase containing nanofilaments, which can form twisted ribbons or helical tubules. The gel is formed by helical tubules that build entangled 3D networks, encapsulating the solvent. The gelation ability has been explained by the phase transition from a twisted ribbon structure to the structure with helical tubules.
COBISS.SI-ID: 26593831