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Hyperuniform materials, characterized by their suppressed density fluctuations and vanishing structure factors as the wave number approaches zero, represent a unique state of matter that straddles the boundary between order and randomness.…
Colloidal particles in polymer solutions and functionalized nanoparticles often exhibit short-range attraction coupled with long-range repulsion (SALR) leading to the spontaneous formation of symmetric patterns. Chiral nanostructures formed…
We carried out dynamic force manipulations $in$ $silico$ on a variety of superhelical protein fragments from myosin, chemotaxis receptor, vimentin, fibrin, and phenylalanine zippers that vary in size and topology of their $\alpha$-helical…
Biologically inspired pressure actuated cellular structures can alter their shape through pressure variations. Previous work introduced a computational framework for pressure actuated cellular structures which was limited to two cell rows…
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…
Patchy colloids are promising candidates for building blocks in directed self-assembly. To be successful the surface patterns need to both be simple enough to be synthesized, while feature-rich enough to cause the colloids to self-assemble…
As soft robot design matures, researchers have converged to sophisticated design paradigms to enable the development of more suitable platforms. Two such paradigms are soft-rigid hybrid robots, which utilize rigid structural materials in…
We present a detailed numerical study of multi-component colloidal gels interacting sterically and obtained by arrested phase separation. Under deformation, we found that the interplay between the different intertwined networks is key.…
We present a geometric framework for the inverse design of smart woven fabrics composed of non-uniformly shrinking threads. A sufficiently tight weaving structure imposes strong local criteria on the material deformation and reduces the…
Twisted graphene multilayers provide tunable platforms to engineer flat bands and exploit the associated strongly correlated physics. The two-dimensional nature of these systems makes them suitable for encapsulation by materials that break…
Colloidal magnetic particles embedded in an elastic polymer matrix constitute a smart material called ferrogel. It responds to an applied external magnetic field by changes in elastic properties, which can be exploited for various…
We investigate the pitch sensitivity of cholesteric phases of helicoidal patchy cylinders as a generic model for chiral (bio-)polymers and helix-shaped colloidal rods. The behaviour of the macroscopic cholesteric pitch is studied from…
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…
Periodic assemblies of nanoparticles are central to surface patterning, with applications in biosensing, energy conversion, and nanofabrication. Evaporation of colloidal droplets on substrates provides a simple yet effective route to…
Photoinduced network formation is an attractive strategy for designing water-insoluble gelatin fibres as medical device building blocks and for enabling late-stage property customisation. However, mechanically-competent, long-lasting…
Complex textured surfaces occur in nature and industry, from fingerprints to lithography-based micropatterns. Wrinkling by confinement to an incompatible substrate is an attractive way of generating reconfigurable patterned topographies,…
We consider disordered solids in which the microscopic elements can deform plastically in response to stresses on them. We show that by driving the system periodically, this plasticity can be exploited to train in desired elastic…
Coarse-grained molecular-dynamics simulations were used to study the morphological changes induced in a Nafion$^{\tiny \textregistered}$-like ionomer by the imposition of a strong electric field. We observe the formation of novel structures…
Microfluidic technology has revolutionized the control of flows at small scales giving rise to new possibilities for assembling complex structures on the microscale. We analyze different possible algorithms for assembling arbitrary…
We show that thin sheets under boundary confinement spontaneously generate a universal self-similar hierarchy of wrinkles. From simple geometry arguments and energy scalings, we develop a formalism based on wrinklons, the transition zone in…