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Recently there has been an increase in demand for soft and biocompatible electronic devices capable of withstanding large stretch. Ionically conductive polymers present a promising class of soft materials for these emerging applications due…
Machines designed for operation in Space, as well as other extreme environments, need to be both resilient and adaptable when mission parameters change. Soft robots offer advantages in adaptability, but most lack resilience to the pressure…
One of the major limitation of standard top-down technologies used in today's neuromorphic engineering is their inability to map the 3D nature of biological brains. Here, we show how bipolar electropolymerization can be used to engineer 3D…
Natural active systems routinely reshape and reorganize their environments through sustained local interactions. Examples of decentralized collective construction are common in nature, e.g., many insects achieve large-scale constructions…
Elastomers that can sustain large reversible strain are essential components for stretchable electronics. The stretchability and mechanical robustness of unfilled elastomers can be enhanced by introducing easier-to-break cross-links, e.g.…
A dielectric elastomer whose edges are held fixed will buckle, given sufficient applied voltage, resulting in a nontrivial out-of-plane deformation. We study this situation numerically using a nonlinear elastic model which decouples two of…
Physical interaction with textiles, such as assistive dressing, relies on advanced dextreous capabilities. The underlying complexity in textile behavior when being pulled and stretched, is due to both the yarn material properties and the…
We present a new finite deformation, dynamic finite element model that incorporates surface tension to capture elastocapillary effects on the electromechanical deformation of dielectric elastomers. We demonstrate the significant effect that…
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.…
This paper contains a thorough investigation of the performance of electrically activated layered soft dielectric composite actuators under plane deformation. Noting that the activation can be induced controlling either the voltage or the…
Soft electronics have recently gathered considerable interest thanks to their bio-mechanical compatibility. An important feature of such deformable conductors is their electrical response to strain. While development of stretchable…
The collective action of actively contractile units embedded in elastic biopolymer networks plays a crucial role in regulating the network's macroscopic mechanical response. Here, we investigate how the macroscopic boundary stress in model…
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…
We use molecular dynamics simulations to investigate the microscopic and macroscopic response of model polymer networks to uniaxial elongations. By studying networks with strands lengths ranging from $N_s=20$ to 200 we cover the full…
Elastic deformation due to embedded fluidic networks is currently studied in the context of soft-actuators and soft-robotic applications. In this work, we analyze interaction between the elastic deflection of a slender beam and viscous flow…
We present a high-accuracy procedure for electronic structure calculations of strongly correlated materials. To address limitations in current electronic structure methods, we employ density functional theory in combination with the…
Microfluidic channels are integral to biomedical technology and process engineering, offering versatility in handling fluids with complex properties, often a combination of viscous and elastic attributes. Despite significant advancements in…
Anchorage-dependent cells collect information on the mechanical properties of the environment through their contractile machineries and use this information to position and orient themselves. Since the probing process is anisotropic,…
Reversible crosslinkers can enable several desirable mechanical properties, such as improved toughness and self-healing, when incorporated in polymer networks for bioengineering and structural applications. In this work, we performed…
Nematic elastomers are a particular class of liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) that exhibit both liquid-crystalline order and rubber (entropic) elasticity. This combination makes them stimuli-responsive soft materials with a number of…