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4D printing empowers 3D printed structures made of hydrogels, liquid crystals or shape memory polymers, with reversible morphing capabilities in response to an external stimulus. To apply reversible shape-change to stiff lightweight…
Microgels are soft colloidal particles constituted by cross-linked polymer networks with a high potential for applications. In particular, after adsorption at a fluid interface, interfacial tension provides two-dimensional (2D) confinement…
This study reports the fundamental investigation of a novel composite material consisting of MXene (Ti$_3$C$_2$T$_x$) and a stimulus-responsive hydrogel (Poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) - PNIPAAm). In contrast to previously reported integration…
The hydrophobic effect is the dominant force which drives a protein towards its native state, but its physics has not been thoroughly understood yet. We introduce an exactly solvable model of the solvation of non-polar molecules in water,…
Currently, most of the waste plastics cannot be recycled, causing serious environmental concerns. In this research, we investigated a compaction formation technology to fabricate structural materials with thermoplastic binders. When the…
Thermo-responsive hydrogels are a promising material for creating controllable actuators for use in micro-scale devices, since they expand and contract significantly (absorbing or expelling fluid) in response to relatively small temperature…
Capacitive technology allows building sensors that are small, compact and have high sensitivity. For this reason it has been widely adopted in robotics. In a previous work we presented a compliant skin system based on capacitive technology…
Fascinating in art and science, the ability to float is also captivating and relevant in practical applications, such as Penning and ion traps that are fundamental to quantum computing. In this work, we first reproduce the classic water…
Materials that can be deformed by thermal stresses at room temperature are called soft materials. Colloidal suspensions comprising solid particles evenly distributed in a fluid phase (smoke, fog, ink and milk, for example),…
Intermolecular forces are known to precipitate adhesion events between solid bodies. Inspired by a macro-scale experiment showing the hysteretic adhesion of a piece of flexible tape over a plastic substrate, we develop here a model of…
Mechanical metamaterials are architected manmade materials that allow for unique behaviors not observed in nature, making them promising candidates for a wide range of applications. Existing metamaterials lack tunability as their properties…
In suitable environments, proteins, nucleic acids and certain synthetic polymers fold into unique conformations. This work shows that it is possible to construct lattice models of foldable heteropolymers by expressing the energy only in…
In this paper, the analysis and homogenization of a poroelastic model for the hydro-mechanical response of fibre-reinforced hydrogels is considered. Here, the medium in question is considered to be a highly heterogeneous two-component media…
From pasta to biological tissues to contact lenses, gel and gel-like materials inherently soften as they swell with water. In dry, low-relative-humidity environments, these materials stiffen as they de-swell with water. Here, we use…
Syntactic foams are composite materials frequently used in applications requiring the properties of low density and high damage tolerance. In the present work, polymer-based syntactic foams were studied under cyclic compression in order to…
Extensibility is beyond the paradigm of classical soft glassy materials, and more broadly, yield-stress fluids. Recently, model yield-stress fluids with significant extensibility have been designed by adding polymeric phases to classically…
Surface effect of low-surface-tension contaminants accumulating at the evaporation surface can easily induce membrane wetting in the application of membrane distillation, especially in hypersaline scenarios. In this work, we propose a novel…
We explore the impact of hydrodynamic interactions on the conformational and dynamical properties of wet tangentially-driven active polymers using multiparticle collision dynamics simulations. By analyzing active filaments with varying…
Raindrops falling on window panes spread upon contact, whereas hail can cause dents or scratches on the same glass window upon contact. While the former phenomenon resembles classical wetting, the latter is dictated by contact and adhesion…
A nearly two-dimensionnal foam is generated inside a Hele-Shaw cell half-filled with a surfactant solution. The cell is then placed vertically on a tumbler so that it rotates around its center with the cell angular velocity as the control…