Spontaneous crumpling of active spherical shells

MC Gandikota and S Das and A Cacciuto, SOFT MATTER, 20, 3635-3640 (2024).

DOI: 10.1039/d4sm00015c

The existence of a crumpled phase for self-avoiding elastic surfaces was postulated more than three decades ago using simple Flory-like scaling arguments. Despite much effort, its stability in a microscopic environment has been the subject of much debate. In this paper we show how a crumpled phase develops reliably and consistently upon subjecting a thin spherical shell to active fluctuations. We find a master curve describing how the relative volume of a shell changes with the strength of the active forces, that applies for every shell independent of size and elastic constants. Furthermore, we extract a general expression for the onset active force beyond which a shell begins to crumple. Finally, we calculate how the size exponent varies along the crumpling curve. The existence of a crumpled Flory phase for equilibrated self-avoiding elastic surfaces has remained contentious. Here, we show that a crumpled phase develops reliably upon subjecting a thin spherical self-avoiding shell to active fluctuations.

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