Related papers: Programming complex shapes in thin nematic elastom…
Liquid crystal elastomers realize a fascinating new form of soft matter that is a composite of a conventional crosslinked polymer gel (rubber) and a liquid crystal. These {\em solid} liquid crystal amalgams, quite similarly to their…
Control of physical behaviors of nematic colloids and colloidal crystals has been demonstrated by tuning particle shape, topology, chirality and surface charging. However, the capability of altering physical behaviors of such soft matter…
Small magnetic particles placed in a relatively soft polymer (with elastic modulus E ~ 10-100 kPa) are magnetically soft elastomers. The external magnetic field acts on each particle which leads to microscopic deformation of the material…
Magnetic gels and elastomers are promising candidates to construct reversibly excitable soft actuators, triggered from outside by magnetic fields. These magnetic fields induce or alter the magnetic interactions between discrete rigid…
The alignment of fibers and cells in living tissues affect their mechanical properties and functionality. In this context, one can draw an analogy between tissues and nematic liquid crystal elastomers. We explore this analogy by growing…
Nematic solids respond strongly to changes in ambient heat or light, significantly differently parallel and perpendicular to the director. This phenomenon is well characterized for uniform director fields, but not for defect textures. We…
Origami metamaterial design enables drastic qualitative changes in the response properties of a thin sheet via the addition of a repeating pattern of folds based around a rigid folding motion. Known also as a mechanism, this folding motion…
We derive the effective energy density of thin membranes of liquid crystal elastomers as the Gamma-limit of a widely used bulk model. These membranes can display fine-scale features both due to wrinkling that one expects in thin elastic…
Active materials are capable of converting free energy into directional motion, giving rise to striking dynamical phenomena. Developing a general understanding of their structure in relation to the underlying non-equilibrium physics would…
In this paper we focus on the mechanical properties of oligomeric glasses (waxes), employing a microscopic model that provides, via numerical simulations, information about the shear modulus of such materials, the failure mechanism via…
We combine large-scale atomistic modelling with continuum elastic theory to study the shapes of graphene sheets embedding nanoscale kirigami. Lattice segments are selectively removed from a flat graphene sheet and the structure is allowed…
Liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) marry the large deformation response of a cross-linked polymer network with the nematic order of liquid crystals pendent to the network. Of particular interest is the actuation of LCE sheets where the…
Very recently, the construction of twist actuators from magnetorheological gels and elastomers has been suggested. These materials consist of magnetizable colloidal particles embedded in a soft elastic polymeric environment. The twist…
Much recent progress has been made in the study of nematic solids, both glassy and elastomeric, particularly in the realm of stress-free, defect-driven deformation in thin sheets of material. In this paper we consider a subset of texture…
A continuum mechanical framework is developed for determining a) the class of stress-free deformed shapes and corresponding director distributions on the undeformed configuration of a nematic glass membrane that has a prescribed spontaneous…
Atomically thin sheets, such as graphene, are widely used in nanotechnology. Recently they have also been used in applications including kirigami and self-folding origami, where it becomes important to understand how they respond to…
In vivo and in vitro systems of cells and extra-cellular matrix (ECM) systems are well known to form ordered patterns of orientationally aligned fibers. Here, we interpret them as active analogs of the (disordered) isotropic to the…
Soft actuators allow to transform external stimuli to mechanical deformations. Because of their deformational response to external magnetic fields, magnetic gels and elastomers represent ideal candidates for such tasks. Mostly, linear…
Nematic polymeric networks are (heat and light) activable materials, which combine the features of rubber and nematic liquid crystals. When only the stretching energy of a thin sheet of nematic polymeric network is minimized, the intrinsic…
Manipulating the shape of nanoscale objects in a controllable fashion is at the heart of designing materials that act as building blocks for self-assembly or serve as targeted drug delivery carriers. Inducing shape deformations by…