Related papers: Design principles for textured multi-layered compo…
External magnetic fields are known to attract and orient magnetically responsive colloidal particles. In the case of 2D microplatelets, rotating magnetic fields are typically used to orient them parallel to each other in a brick-and-mortar…
Porous magnetic silica beads are promising materials for biological and environmental applications due to their enhanced adsorption and ease of recovery. This work aims to develop a new, inexpensive and environmentally friendly approach…
Colloids dispersed in nematic liquid crystals form topological composites in which colloid-associated defects mediate interactions while adhering to fundamental topological constraints. Better realising the promise of such materials…
Spherically-symmetric atom-centered descriptors of atomic environments have been widely used for constructing potential or free energy surfaces of atomistic and colloidal systems and to characterize local structures using machine learning…
We determine the effective behavior of a class of composites in finite-strain crystal plasticity, based on a variational model for materials made of fine parallel layers of two types. While one component is completely rigid in the sense…
Spherical microparticles dispersed in nematic liquid crystals have been extensively investigated in the past years. Here, we report experimental studies on the elastic deformation, colloidal interaction and self-assembly of hematite…
Mechanical metamaterials can be designed to exhibit unique mechanical properties, including tunable auxetic behavior as well as multi-stability, which arise from the geometry and configuration of the constituent building blocks.…
Controlled micro- to meso-scale porosity is a common materials design goal with possible applications ranging from molecular gas adsorption to particle size selective permeability or solubility. Here, we use inverse methods of statistical…
Porous mesophases, where well-defined particle-depleted 'void' spaces are present within a particle-rich background fluid, can be self-assembled from colloidal particles interacting via isotropic pair interactions with competing attractions…
Soft particles such as microgels and core-shell particles can undergo significant and anisotropic deformations when adsorbed to a liquid interface. This, in turn, leads to a complex phase behavior upon compression. Here we develop a…
Folding can transform mundane objects such as napkins into stunning works of art. However, finding new folding transformations for sheet materials is a challenging problem that requires expertise and real-world experimentation. In this…
Multiscale periodic metamaterials have been designed for numerous applications, such as impact absorption, acoustic cloaking, photonic band gaps, and mechanical logic gates. This prior work has focused on optimizing mesoscale structure for…
The design of desired behaviors in mechanical metamaterials has produced remarkable advances but has generally neglected two aspects - the inevitable presence of undesired behaviors and the role of dynamics in avoiding such behaviors.…
Topological protection ensures stability of information and particle transport against perturbations. We explore experimentally and computationally the topologically protected transport of magnetic colloids above spatially inhomogeneous…
Macroscopic elastic core-shell systems can be generated as toy models to be deformed and haptically studied by hand. On the mesoscale, colloidal core-shell particles and microgels are fabricated and investigated by different types of…
We describe a technique for surface and sub-surface micro-machining of glass substrates using tightly focused femtosecond laser pulses at a wavelength of 1660 nm. Although silicate glass is normally transparent at this wavelength, the…
We propose a predictive model for the mechanical behavior of biodegradable polymers of interest for biomedical applications. Starting from a detailed description of the network behavior of the copolymer material, taking care of bonds…
We examine the organization and dynamics of binary colloidal monolayers composed of micron-scale silica particles interspersed with smaller-diameter silica particles that serve as minority component impurities. These binary monolayers are…
We present an experimental protocol for the fabrication and characterization of scalable microarchitected elastic waveguides. Using silicon microfabrication techniques, we develop free-standing 2D truss-based architected waveguides with a…
Magnetic soft robots embedded with hard magnetic particles enable untethered actuation via external magnetic fields, offering remote, rapid, and precise control, which is highly promising for biomedical applications. However, designing such…