Soft Matter, Life Sciences & Pharma

This study investigates how peptide-based soft condensates mature, reorganize, and collapse depending on whether they are passive or actively driven. Using in situ liquid TEM, cryo-EM, optical imaging, and simulations, the authors show that nanoscale interfacial organization plays a decisive role in determining whether condensates stabilize and age, or destabilize and burst under active driving forces.

This study demonstrates how liquid cell TEM can visualize fast nanoscale processes during liquid reagent mixing in real time. By sequentially introducing and withdrawing solvents inside a commercial liquid cell, the authors maintained suitable imaging conditions while mixing liquids, enabling direct observation of the crystallization behavior of R-BINOL-CN when dissolved in chloroform and exposed to methanol.

This study shows that amphiphilic self-assembly can be preceded by liquid–liquid phase separation, where polymer-rich liquid droplets act as transient precursors before forming spherical micelles and eventually vesicles. Using liquid-phase electron microscopy, combined with theoretical modeling and free-energy calculations, the authors reveal how early nanoscale phase behavior influences the final structure of amphiphilic assemblies.