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A continuing challenge in material science is how to create active materials in which shape changes or displacements can be generated electrically or thermally. Here we borrow principles from hydraulics, in particular that confined…
Elastin is a structural protein with outstanding mechanical properties (e.g., elasticity and resilience) and biologically relevant functions (e.g., triggering responses like cell adhesion or chemotaxis). It is formed from its precursor…
As liquids approach the glass transition temperature, dynamical heterogeneity emerges as a crucial universal feature of their behavior. Dynamic facilitation, where local motion triggers further motion nearby, plays a major role in this…
Silica is known as the archetypal strong liquid, exhibiting an Arrhenius viscosity curve with a high glass transition temperature and constant activation energy. However, given the ideally isostatic nature of the silica network, the…
In many industrial processes, pieces of the same polymer material are brought into contact at a temperature above the glass transition. Interdiffusion then takes place across the interface and leads to a strengthening of the junction.…
We elucidate the polymer dynamics of a liquid crystal elastomer based on the time-dependent response of the pendent liquid crystal mesogens. The molecular tilt and switching time of mesogens are analyzed as a function of temperature and…
A model is derived for the viscoelastic response of glasses at isothermal uniaxial deformation with small strains. A glass is treated as an ensemble of relaxing units with various activation energies for rearrangement. With reference to the…
There is a growing interest in producing materials with mechanical behaviours similar to those of internal organs. An artificial tissue may be expected to experience several types of compressive and shear deformation in the course of normal…
Youngs modulus of soft solids composed of crosslinked synthetic polypeptides has been determined under different conditions. Co-poly-(L-glutamic acid$_4$, L-tyrosine$_1$) [PLEY (4:1)] was crosslinked with poly-L-lysine (PLK) and…
Thermo-elasticity couples the deformation of an elastic (solid) body to its temperature and vice-versa. It is a solid-like property. Highlighting such property in liquids is a paradigm shift: it requires long-range collective interactions…
A large and high-quality single crystal (Li0.84Fe0.16)OHFe0.98Se, the optimal superconductor of newly reported (Li1-xFex)OHFe1-ySe system, has been successfully synthesized via a hydrothermal ion-exchange technique. The superconducting…
We study the switching dynamics in two-domain and four-domain twisted nematic liquid crystal devices. The equilibrium configuration of these devices involves the coexistence of regions characterised by different handedness of the inherent…
Much work has studied effective interactions between micron-sized particles carrying linkers forming reversible, inter-particle linkages. These studies allowed understanding the equilibrium properties of colloids interacting through…
Liquid crystal elastomers are rubbers with liquid crystal order. They contract along their nematic director when heated or illuminated. The shape changes are large and occur in a relatively narrow temperature interval, or at low…
There is considerable interest in designing new polymeric materials with built-in mechanisms for recycling. In this work, we present a systematic exploration of several polyethylene-based polymers that contain strategically incorporated…
Silicone is frequently used as a model system to investigate and tune wetting on soft materials. Silicone is biocompatible and shows excellent thermal, chemical, and UV stability. Moreover, the mechanical properties of the surface can be…
Spin crossover molecules have two accessible states: high spin (HS) and low spin (LS). We show that, on the pyrochlore lattice, elastic interactions between SCO molecules can give rise to three spin-state ice phases. Each is a ``Coulomb…
Hypothesis: Surfactants are often added to aqueous solutions to induce spreading on otherwise unwettable hydrophobic surfaces. Alternatively, they can be introduced directly into solid hydrophobic materials-such as the soft elastomer,…
Dielectric elastomers (DEs) that couple deformation and electrostatics have the potential for use in soft sensors and actuators with applications ranging from robotic, biomedical, energy, aerospace and automotive technologies. However,…
We consider single band of conduction electrons interacting with displacements of the transitional ions.In the classical regime strong coupling transforms the harmonic elastic energy for an ion to the one of the well with two deep minima,so…