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A fundamental challenge in soft material design is the competition between rigidity and dynamicity, as stiffening mechanisms typically suppress energy dissipation. Here, we demonstrate that starch granules serve as instructive scaffolds…
Tissue engineering aims to grow artificial tissues \emph{in vitro} to replace those in the body that have been damaged through age, trauma or disease. A recent approach to engineer artificial cartilage involves seeding cells within a…
Hydrogels are widespread soft materials, which can serve a wide range of applications. The control over the viscoelastic properties of the gel is of paramount importance. Ongoing environmental issues have raised the consumer's concern…
Two types of high-strength composite hydrogels possessing the structure of interpenetrating polymer networks were synthesized via free-radical polymerization of acrylamide carried out straight within the matrix of plant or bacterial…
Programmable materials are desirable for a variety of functional applications that range from biomedical devices, actuators and soft robots to adaptive surfaces and deployable structures. However, current smart materials are often designed…
Engineering simple, artificial models of living cells allows synthetic biologists to study cellular functions under well-controlled conditions. Reconstituting multicellular behaviors with synthetic cell-mimics is still a challenge because…
Biological hydrogels have been increasingly sought after as e.g. wound dressings or scaffolds for regenerative medicine, due to their inherent biofunctionality in biological environments. Especially in moist wound healing, the ideal…
With exquisite precision and reproducibility, cells orchestrate the cooperative action of thousands of nanometer-sized molecular motors to carry out mechanical tasks at much larger length scales, such as cell motility, division and…
Inspired by the cellular design of plant tissue, we present a new approach to make versatile, tough, highly water-swelling composites. We embed highly swelling hydrogel particles inside tough, water-permeable, elastomeric matrices. The…
During growth, tissue expands and deforms. Given its elastic properties, stresses emerge in an expanding and deforming tissue. Cell rearrangements can dissipate these stresses and numerous experiments confirm the viscoelastic properties of…
Living tissues show an extraordinary adaptiveness to strain, which is crucial for their proper biological functioning. The physical origin of this mechanical behaviour has been widely investigated using reconstituted networks of collagen…
Active materials capable of autonomously modulating their mechanical properties are foundational to the development of next-generation soft technologies. Here, we introduce a novel class of extensible biohybrid hydrogels powered by living…
Hydrogels are soft materials engineered to suit a multitude of applications that exploit their tunable mechanochemical properties. Dynamic hydrogels employing noncovalent, physically crosslinked networks dominated by either enthalpic or…
Extrusion 3D-printing of biopolymers and natural fiber-based biocomposites allows for the fabrication of complex structures, ranging from gels for healthcare applications to eco-friendly structural materials. However, traditional polymer…
Hydrogel adhesion that can be easily modulated in magnitude, space, and time is desirable in many emerging applications ranging from tissue engineering, and soft robotics, to wearable devices. In synthetic materials, these complex adhesion…
Deployable structures, essential across various engineering applications ranging from umbrellas to satellites, are evolving to include soft, morphable designs where geometry drives transformation. However, a major challenge for soft…
Microcapsules are a key class of microscale materials with applications in areas ranging from personal care to biomedicine, and with increasing potential to act as extracellular matrix (ECM) models of hollow organs or tissues. Such capsules…
Hydrogels provide a solution-mimicking environment for the interaction with living systems that make them desirable for various biomedical and technological applications. Because relevant biological processes in living tissues occur at the…
Stimulus-responsive DNA-hydrogels with swelling capabilities are a promising class of materials for biomedical applications such as drug delivery and biosensing. However, translation of these systems to microscale applications requires…
Biological living materials, such as animal bones and plant stems, are able to self-heal, regenerate, adapt and make decisions under environmental pressures. Despite recent successful efforts to imbue synthetic materials with some of these…