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We study the deformation of a liquid interface with arbitrary principal curvatures by a flat circular sheet. Working first at small slopes, we determine the shape of the sheet analytically in the membrane limit, where the sheet is…
Nematic elastomers and glasses deform spontaneously when subjected to temperature changes. This property can be exploited in the design of heterogeneously patterned thin sheets that deform into a non-trivial shape when heated or cooled. In…
Collective cell motions underlie structure formation during embryonic development. Tissues exhibit emergent multicellular characteristics such as jamming, rigidity transitions, and glassy dynamics, but there remain questions about how those…
We consider three-dimensional reshaping of a thin nematoelastic film upon nematic-isotropic transition in the field of a charge one topological defect, leading to either cone or anticone (d-cone) shells. The analysis is based on the…
In this paper, the two-dimensional pure bending of a hyperelastic substrate coated by a nematic liquid crystal elastomer (abbreviated as NLCE) is studied within the framework of nonlinear elasticity. The governing system, arising from the…
We investigate the out-of-plane shape morphing capability of single-material elastic sheets with architected cut patterns that result in arrays of tiles connected by flexible hinges. We demonstrate that a non-periodic cut pattern can cause…
Biological cells in living tissues form dynamic patterns with local orientational order and topological defects. Here we demonstrate an approach to produce cell monolayer with the predesigned orientational patterns using human dermal…
Macroscopic elastic core-shell systems can be generated as toy models to be deformed and haptically studied by hand. On the mesoscale, colloidal core-shell particles and microgels are fabricated and investigated by different types of…
The geometry of two-dimensional crystalline membranes dictates their mechanical, electronic and chemical properties. The local geometry of a surface is determined from the two invariants of the metric and the curvature tensors. Here we…
We combine theory and experiments to explore the kinematics and actuation of intrinsically curved folds (ICFs) in otherwise developable shells. Unlike origami folds, ICFs are not bending isometries of flat sheets, but arise via…
Nematic elastomers and glasses are solids that display spontaneous distortion under external stimuli. Recent advances in the synthesis of sheets with controlled heterogeneities have enabled their actuation into non-trivial shapes with…
Using experiments and numerical simulations, we demonstrate that the curvature of microscale conduits allow programming of liquid crystal (LC) flows. Focusing on a nematic LC flowing through U- and L-shaped channels of rectangular…
When a nematic liquid crystal (LC) is confined on a self-closing spherical shell, topological constraints arise with intriguing consequences that depend critically on how the LC is aligned in the shell. We demonstrate reversible dynamic…
By means of computer simulations we study how droplets of hard, rod-like particles optimize their shape and internal structure under the influence of the osmotic compression caused by the presence of spherical particles that act as…
Thin solids often develop elastic instabilities and subsequently complex, multiscale deformation patterns. Revealing the organizing principles of this spatial complexity has ramifications for our understanding of morphogenetic processes in…
Evaporating droplets of polymer or colloid solution may produce a glassy crust at the liquid-vapour interface, which subsequently deforms as an elastic shell. For sessile droplets, the known radial outward flow of solvent is expected to…
Curved particles have been shown to stabilize a range of states with unique order in dense suspensions of colloidal bent core liquid crystals. The shape of the colloidal rods encourages the formation of curved director fields. However,…
Rigidity transitions in simple models of confluent cells have been a powerful organizing principle in understanding the dynamics and mechanics of dense biological tissue. In this work we explore the interplay between geometry and rigidity…
We give a description of the intrinsic geometry of elastic distortions in three-dimensional nematic liquid crystals and establish necessary and sufficient conditions for a set of functions to represent these distortions by describing how…
Lack of stiffness often limits thin shape-shifting structures to small scales. The large in-plane transformations required to distort the metrics are indeed commonly achieved by using soft hydrogels or elastomers. We introduce here a…