Related papers: Ridge approximation for thin nematic polymer netwo…
Active dynamic processes of cells are largely driven by the cytoskeleton, a complex and adaptable semiflexible polymer network, motorized by mechanoenzymes. Small dimensions, confined geome- tries and hierarchical structures make it…
Control of physical behaviors of nematic colloids and colloidal crystals has been demonstrated by tuning particle shape, topology, chirality and surface charging. However, the capability of altering physical behaviors of such soft matter…
Recent experiments have demonstrated that the nonlinear elasticity of in vitro networks of the biopolymer actin is dramatically altered in the presence of a flexible cross-linker such as the abundant cytoskeletal protein filamin. The basic…
The adhesive behaviour of biological attachment structures such as spider web anchorages is usually studied using single or multiple peeling models involving "tapes", i.e. one-dimensional contacts elements. This is an oversimplification for…
Motivated by recent experiments showing nonlinear elasticity of in vitro networks of the biopolymer actin cross-linked with filamin, we present an effective medium theory of flexibly cross-linked stiff polymer networks. We model such…
Excited-state dynamics simulations are a powerful tool to investigate photo-induced reactions of molecules and materials and provide complementary information to experiments. Since the applicability of these simulation techniques is limited…
We report temperature-responsive soft composites of semiflexible biopolymer networks (fibrin) containing dispersed microgel colloidal particles of poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (pNIPAM) that undergo a thermodynamically driven de-swelling…
Photoactive nematic elastomers are soft rubbery solids that undergo deformation when illuminated. They are made by incorporating photoactive molecules like azobenzene into nematic liquid crystal elastomers. Since its initial demonstration…
The developments of deep neural networks (DNN) in recent years have ushered a brand new era of artificial intelligence. DNNs are proved to be excellent in solving very complex problems, e.g., visual recognition and text understanding, to…
High-density carbon nanotube networks (CNNs) continue to attract interest as active elements in nanoelectronic devices, nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS) and multifunctional nanocomposites. The interplay between the network nanostructure…
Reinforced elastic sheets surround us in daily life, from concrete shell buildings to biological structures such as the arthropod exoskeleton or the venation network of dicotyledonous plant leaves. Natural structures are often highly…
We develop a systematic field theoretic description for the roughness correction to the Casimir free energy of parallel plates. Roughness is modeled by specifying a generating functional for correlation functions of the height profile, the…
We consider a Landau-de Gennes model for a polydisperse, inhomogeneous suspension of colloidal inclusions in a nematic host, in the dilute regime. We study the homogenised limit and compute the effective free energy of the composite…
Nonlinear metamaterials with tailored mechanical properties have applications in engineering, medicine, robotics, and beyond. While modeling their macromechanical behavior is challenging in itself, finding structure parameters that lead to…
Reducing energy consumption is a critical point for neural network models running on edge devices. In this regard, reducing the number of multiply-accumulate (MAC) operations of Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) running on edge hardware…
In biomimetic and biological systems, interactions between surfaces are often mediated by adhesive molecules, nanoparticles, or colloids dispersed in the surrounding solution. We present here a general, statistical-mechanical model for two…
Electrically conducting polymers with mechanical adaptability are essential for flexible electronics, yet most suffer structural degradation under rapid deformation. In this study, multiscale coarse-grained (MSCG) simulations are used to…
The state-of-the-art deep neural networks (DNNs) have been widely applied for various real-world applications, and achieved significant performance for cognitive problems. However, the increment of DNNs' width and depth in architecture…
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,…
The spontaneous creation of disclinations is a defining characteristic of active nematics, which is rarely observed in equilibrium systems or other active matter systems. Thus, understanding the mechanics of disclinations is crucial for…