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The emerging applications of hydrogels in devices and machines require these soft materials to maintain robustness under cyclic mechanical loads. Whereas hydrogels have been made tough to resist fracture under a single cycle of mechanical…
Gels are an increasingly important class of soft materials with applications ranging from regenerative medicine to commodity materials. A major drawback of gels is their relative mechanical weakness, which worsens further under strain. We…
Catch bonds are interactions whose lifetimes increase under mechanical load, a counterintuitive behaviour that underlies diverse biological processes. Translating this mechanism to synthetic materials offers the potential to create systems…
Natural rubber (NR) is the most commonly used elastomer in the automotive industry thanks to its outstanding fatigue resistance. Strain-induced crystallization (SIC) is found to play a role of paramount importance in the great crack growth…
Implantable hydrogels should ideally possess mechanical properties matched to the surrounding tissues to enable adequate mechanical function while regeneration occurs. This can be challenging, especially when degradable systems with high…
\textbf{Background} Hydrogels are crosslinked polymer networks that can absorb and retain a large fraction of liquid. Near a critical sliding velocity, hydrogels pressed against smooth surfaces exhibit time-dependent frictional behavior…
Fibre-reinforced hydrogels are promising materials for biomedical applications due to their strength, toughness, and tunability. However, it remains unclear how to design fibre-reinforced hydrogels for use in specific applications due to…
Shells, i.e., objects made of a thin layer of material following a surface, are among the most common structures in use. They are highly efficient, in terms of material required to maintain strength, but also prone to deformation and…
Hydrogels are biphasic, swollen polymer networks where elastic deformation is coupled to nanoscale fluid flow. As a consequence, hydrogels can withstand large strains and exhibit nonlinear, hyperelastic properties. For low-modulus hydrogel…
Self-healing polymers crosslinked by solely reversible bonds are intrinsically weaker than common covalently crosslinked networks. Introducing covalent crosslinks into a reversible network would improve mechanical strength. It is…
The design of hydrogels that combine mechanical robustness with dynamic reconfigurability remains a fundamental challenge, as increasing crosslink dissociation rates compromise network integrity. This limitation is addressed through the…
Hydrogels are crosslinked polymer networks with high water content, widely employed in biomedical applications such as drug delivery, tissue engineering, and regenerative medicine. Injectable, depot-forming hydrogels enable sustained…
Strain-engineering in SiGe nanostructures is fundamental for the design of optoelectronic devices at the nanoscale. Here we explore a new strategy, where SiGe structures are laterally confined by the Si substrate, to obtain high tensile…
The resistance to fracture of reversible biopolymer hydrogels is an important control factor of the cutting/slicing and eating characteristics of food gels. It is also critical for their utilization in tissue engineering, for which…
Biological hydrogels have been increasingly sought after as e.g. wound dressings or scaffolds for regenerative medicine, due to their inherent biofunctionality in biological environments. Especially in moist wound healing, the ideal…
High-manganese twinning-induced plasticity (TWIP) steels exhibit high strain hardening, high tensile strength, and high ductility, which make them attractive for structural applications. At low tensile strain rates, TWIP steels are prone to…
Due to time-reversal symmetry (TRS), two dimensional topological insulators support counter-propagating helical edge modes. Here we show that, unlike the infinitely sharp edge potential utilized in traditional calculations, an…
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…
Charged colloidal particles can self-assemble into gel networks upon screening of electrostatic repulsion by added salt. While gelation of spherical colloids has been extensively studied, much less is known about the gelation dynamics of…
High-strength composite hydrogels cellulose-polyacrylamide were synthesized by free-radical polymerization of acrylamide conducted inside the previously formed physical network of regenerated plant cellulose. Partial hydrolysis of the amide…