BIOMATERIALS

Decades of theories of underlying dynamic processes in soft condensed matter and biomaterials have been mostly built on ensemble-averaged measurements.

 

We recently show that direct high-throughput imaging at single-molecule level often yield surprises and shed new lights, contrary to classical expectation. For example, we show that a long polymer chain driven through obstacles would walk in discrete stretch-recoil steps rather than continuous smooth snaking-though as commonly thought.

 

Even a simple hard-sphere colloid suspension can exhibit break-down of classical Gaussian displacement distribution.​