Related papers: Cross-linking of polyesters based on fatty acids
Fluid ferroelectrics, a recently discovered class of liquid crystals that exhibit switchable, long-range polar order, offer opportunities in ultrafast electro-optic technologies, responsive soft matter, and next-generation energy materials.…
Nanoscale polymeric thin films are widely used in diverse applications such as energy devices, flexible electronics and biosensors, where a satisfactory mechanical performance is of vital importance to realize their full functionality. It…
Thermo-gelling polymers have been envisioned as promising smart biomaterials but limited to their weak mechanical and thermodynamic stabilities. Here we propose a new thermo-gelling vitrimer, which remains at a liquid state because of the…
Living matter moves, deforms, and organizes itself. In cells this is made possible by networks of polymer filaments and crosslinking molecules that connect filaments to each other and that act as motors to do mechanical work on the network.…
Piezoelectricity, the generation of electric charge in response to mechanical stress, is a key property in both natural and synthetic materials. This study significantly boosts the piezoelectric response of chitosan, a biodegradable…
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…
Against common sense, auxetic materials expand or contract perpendicularly when stretched or compressed, respectively, by uniaxial strain, being characterized by a negative Poisson's ratio $\nu$. The amount of deformation in response to the…
Reducing the complexity of cross-linked polymer networks by preserving their main macroscale properties, is key to understanding them, and a crucial issue is to relate individual properties of the polymer constituents to those of the…
We review the physical properties of macromolecular networks, consisting of semiflexible polymers such as actin. We start by giving a theoretical analysis of the conformational statistics and mechanical response of single filaments.…
The urge for efficient and environmentally friendly alternatives for the current gas-based refrigeration is becoming more critical due to global warming and overpopulation. Among the main candidates, solid-state-based cooling technology is…
Cytoskeletal networks of biopolymers are cross-linked by a variety of proteins. Experiments have shown that dynamic cross-linking with physiological linker proteins leads to complex stress relaxation and enables network flow at long times.…
Interactions between active individuals in animal collectives lead to emergent responses that remain elusive in synthetic soft matter. Here, shape-morphing polymers are used to create bio-inspired transient solids that self-assemble with…
Within the frame of an effective, coarse-grained hydrophobic-polar protein model, we employ multicanonical Monte Carlo simulations to investigate free-energy landscapes and folding channels of exemplified heteropolymer sequences, which are…
We propose a class of microstructurally informed models for the linear elastic mechanical behavior of cross-linked polymer networks such as the actin cytoskeleton. Salient features of the models include the possibility to represent…
Hydrogels are increasingly recognized as a versatile platform for applications spanning from tissue engineering to soft robotics or flexible electronics. Recent efforts have focused on enhancing and tailoring their mechanical performance to…
Epoxy resins are used extensively in composite materials for a wide range of engineering applications, including structural components of aircraft and spacecraft. The processing of fiber-reinforced epoxy composite structures requires…
Ferrogels and magnetic elastomers differentiate themselves from other materials by their unique capability of reversibly changing shape and mechanical properties under the influence of an external magnetic field. A crucial issue in the…
Contractile biopolymer networks, such as the actomyosin meshwork of animal cells, are ubiquitous in living organisms. The active gel theory, which provides the thermodynamic framework for these materials, has been mostly used in conjunction…
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…
Photoactive liquid crystal elastomers are polymer networks of liquid crystal mesogens embedded with chromophores like azobenzene. They undergo large deformation when illuminated by light of a certain wavelength through photochemical…