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We develop and implement an automated experiment in multimodal imaging to probe structural, chemical, and functional behaviors in complex materials and elucidate the dominant physical mechanisms that control device function. Here the…
The requirements pertaining to the reliability and accuracy of micro-electromechanical gyroscopic sensors are increasing,as systems for vehicle localization emerge as an enabling factor for autonomous driving. Since micro-electromechanical…
We demonstrate here a proof-of-concept experiment that microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) can be actuated using photoelectrowetting. In order to demonstrate this, a 30 \mu m thick aluminum cantilever is actuated using an ordinary white…
Recent experimental results on the static or quasistatic response of granular materials have been interpreted to suggest the inapplicability of the traditional engineering approaches, which are based on elasto-plastic models (which are…
Rhombohedral (ABC-stacked) multilayer graphene hosts interaction-driven phases enabled by surface flat bands at large displacement fields. In thick flakes, however, strong screening suppresses internal electric fields, raising the question…
In the perspective of developing smart hybrid materials with customized features, ferrogels and magnetorheological elastomers allow a synergy of elasticity and magnetism. The interplay between elastic and magnetic properties gives rise to a…
Wearable and legged robot designers face multiple challenges when choosing actuation. Traditional fully actuated designs using electric motors are multifunctional but oversized and inefficient for bearing conservative loads and for being…
Active dynamic processes of cells are largely driven by the cytoskeleton, a complex and adaptable semiflexible polymer network, motorized by mechanoenzymes. Small dimensions, confined geome- tries and hierarchical structures make it…
Design of robots at the small scale is a trial-and-error based process, which is costly and time-consuming. There are no good dynamic simulation tools to predict the motion or performance of a microrobot as it moves against a substrate. At…
The electric forces acting on an atomic force microscope tip in solution have been measured using a microelectrochemical cell formed by two periodically biased electrodes. The forces were measured as a function of lift height and bias…
Piezoelectric actuators have been widely used to form a self-monitoring smart system to do Structural health monitoring (SHM). One of the most fundamental issues in using actuators is to determine the actuation effects being transferred…
A bistable micro-mechanical system based on magnetic repulsion is presented exploring its applicability as memory unit where the state of the bit is encoded in the rest position of a deflected cantilever. The non-linearity induced on the…
We investigate the finite bending and the associated bending instability of an incompressible dielectric slab subject to a combination of applied voltage and axial compression, using nonlinear electro-elasticity theory and its incremental…
In this paper, we investigate some micromechanical aspects of elasto-plasticity in heterogeneous geomaterials. The aim is to upscale the elasto-plastic behavior for a representative volume of the material which is indeed a very challenging…
This paper presents a framework for modeling failure in quasi-brittle geomaterials under different loading conditions. A micromechanics-based model is proposed in which the field variables are linked to physical mechanisms at the microcrack…
The dynamical-mean-field method is applied to investigate the transport properties of heterostructures consisting of a strongly-correlated electron system connected to metallic leads. The spectral function inside the correlated region is…
We provide a clear energetic insight into the catastrophic nature of the so-called creasing and pull-in instabilities in soft electro-active elastomers. These phenomena are ubiquitous for thin electro-elastic plates and are a major obstacle…
Due to the increasing number of industrial applications of electro-active polymers (EAPs), there is a growing need for electromechanical models which accurately capture their behavior. To this end, we compare the predicted behavior of EAPs…
Dynamic interactions between two oscillating micromechanical cantilevers are studied. In the experiment, the tip of a high-frequency cantilever is positioned near the surface of a second low-frequency cantilever. Due to the highly nonlinear…
Flexible piezoelectric devices made of polymeric materials are widely used for micro- and nano-electro-mechanical systems. In particular, numerous recent applications concern energy harvesting. Due to the importance of computational…