From Droplets to Bridges: Nucleation and Growth of Chemically Active Droplets

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• Noah Ziethen, DAMTP/Max Planck Institute, for Dynamics and Self-Organization
• Tuesday 21 October 2025, 13:00-14:00
• Center for Mathematical Sciences, Lecture room MR4..

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Tal Agranov.

Driven chemical reactions can control the macroscopic properties of droplets, like their size. Such active droplets are critical in structuring the interior of biological cells. When bridging two structures, such droplets generate capillary forces, which depend on surface properties and distance. Understanding these forces in the presence of active chemical reactions requires determining how chemical reactions alter both droplet nucleation, which controls the onset of force, and the forces themselves. Here, we employ an equilibrium surrogate model, which reveals that reactions increase the effective energy barrier of nucleation, enabling quantitative predictions of the increased nucleation times. Once bridges form, we demonstrate that reactions control the radius of the bridge. This ultimately leads to purely repulsive forces, which contrasts with the typically attractive forces in passive systems. Our results reveal how chemical activity can fundamentally alter forces generated by liquid bridges, which could be exploited by cells.

This talk is part of the DAMTP Statistical Physics and Soft Matter Seminar series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• All CMS events
• Center for Mathematical Sciences, Lecture room MR4.
• DAMTP Statistical Physics and Soft Matter Seminar
• Soft Matter
• bld31

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