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Updated: May 14, 2026

Controlled Strain of 3D Hydrogels under Live Microscopy Imaging
Published on: December 4, 2020
Unexpected decoupling of stretching and bending modes in protein gels
Thomas Gibaud1, Alessio Zaccone, Emanuela Del Gado
1Laboratoire de Physique, ENS Lyon, Université de Lyon I, CNRS/UMR 5672, 46 Allée d'Italie, 69007 Lyon, France. thomas.gibaud@ens-lyon.fr
Abstract:
We show that gels formed by arrested spinodal decomposition of protein solutions exhibit elastic properties in two distinct frequency domains, both elastic moduli exhibiting a remarkably strong dependence on volume fraction. Considering the large difference between the protein size and the characteristic length of the network we model the gels as porous media and show that the high and low frequency elastic moduli can be respectively attributed to stretching and bending modes. The unexpected decoupling of the two modes in the frequency domain is attributed to the length scale involved: while stretching mainly relates to the relative displacement of two particles, bending involves the deformation of a strand with a thickness of the order of a thousand particle diameters.
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