Related papers: Compression-induced failure of electro-active poly…
Entangled states are ubiquitous amongst fibrous materials, whether naturally occurring (keratin, collagen, DNA) or synthetic (nanotube assemblies, elastane). A key mechanical characteristic of these systems is their ability to reorganise in…
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…
Mullins' theory predicts the buildup of adatoms during surface diffusion at the edges of grooves where grain boundaries emerge to the surface of a polycrystalline film. However, the mesoscopic nature of this theory prevents the…
The broadening in photoelectron spectra of polymers can be attributed to several factors, such as light source spread, spectrometer resolution, finite lifetime of the hole state, and solid-state effects. Here, for the first time, we set up…
Bulk single-crystal relaxor-ferroelectrics, like Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3-PbTiO3 (PMN-PT), are widely known for their large piezoelectricity. This is attributed to polarization rotation which is facilitated by the presence of various crystal…
We present a statistical mechanical study of stiff polymers, motivated by experiments on actin filaments and the considerable current interest in polymer networks. We obtain simple, approximate analytical forms for the force-extension…
(Electric) polarization tensors describe part of the leading order term of asymptotic voltage perturbations caused by low volume fraction inhomogeneities of the electrical properties of a medium. They depend on the geometry of the support…
We extend classical Flory-Rehner theory for the expansion and compression of porous materials such as cross-linked polymer networks. The theory includes volume exclusion, affinity with the solvent, and finite stretching of the polymer…
Thin block copolymer films have attracted considerable academic attention because of their ability to self-assemble into various microstructures, many of which have potential technological applications. Despite the ongoing interest, little…
Despite a century of use, the mechanism of nanoparticle-driven mechanical reinforcement of elastomers is unresolved. A major hypothesis attributes it to glassy interparticle bridges, supported by an observed inversion of the variation of…
Determining the electronic properties of nanoscopic, low-dimensional materials free of external influences is key to discovery and understanding of new physical phenomena. An example is the suspension of graphene, which has allowed access…
The deformation problem for a transversely isotropic elastic layer bonded to a rigid substrate and coated with a very thin elastic layer made of another transversely isotropic material is considered. The leading-order asymptotic models (for…
The force-level Elastically Collective Nonlinear Langevin Equation theory of activated relaxation in glass-forming free-standing thin films is re-visited to improve its treatment of collective elasticity effects. The naive cut off of the…
Several experiments have demonstrated the existence of an electro-mechanical effect in many biological tissues and hydrogels, and its actual influence on growth, migration, and pattern formation. Here, to model these interactions and…
Simulations are used to examine the microscopic origins of strain hardening in polymer glasses. While stress-strain curves for a wide range of temperature can be fit to the functional form predicted by entropic network models, many other…
We study Coulomb drag between the top and bottom surfaces of topological insulator films. We derive a kinetic equation for the thin-film spin density matrix containing the full spin structure of the two-layer system, and analyze the…
We present a theory for the elasticity of cross-linked stiff polymer networks. Stiff polymers, unlike their flexible counterparts, are highly anisotropic elastic objects. Similar to mechanical beams stiff polymers easily deform in bending,…
An analytical model of mechanical stress in a polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) of a hydrogen/air fuel cell with porous Water Transfer Plates (WTP) is developed in this work. The model considers a mechanical stress in the membrane is a…
Much attention has been given recently to flexible and wearable integrated-electronic devices, with a strong emphasis on real-time sensing, computing and communication technologies. Thin ferroelectric films exhibit switchable polarization…
Vapor deposition on polycrystalline films can lead to staggering levels of compressive stress, exceeding even the yield strength of the films. Mysteriously, a significant part of this stress has a reversible nature: it disappears when the…