Fig. 4: Variations in latch sequence length reveal the emergence of catch-bond behaviour at high N_latch.

a, Plots of the average v_roll as a function of \({\dot{\gamma }}\) over a range of N_Latch sequence lengths (green) in comparison to the slip bond (grey). Contrary to the slip-bond control, v_roll is insensitive to \({\dot{\gamma }}\) for each latch sequence variation. This indicates a deviation from slip-bond behaviour similar to that observed for the catch-bond design for N_latch = 7. b, Plots of f_roll as a function of \({\dot{\gamma }}\) over a range of N_latch sequence lengths (blue) and the slip bond (grey). For N_latch between 2 and 5, f_roll increases slightly or remains constant. By contrast, a clear decreasing trend indicates catch bonding is only observed for N_latch = 7. Filled zones in a indicate standard deviations. Measurements for N_latch = 7 at \({\dot{\gamma }} > {667}\,{{{{\rm{s}}}}}^{-1}\) contained fewer than 30 particles and were hence excluded due to a lack of statistics. The numbers of particle trajectories analysed per datapoint are listed in Supplementary Tables 5b and 6a.