Related papers: Stimuli-responsive twist actuators made from soft …
Investigations of molecular magnets are driven both by prospective applications in future storage technology or quantum computing as well as by fundamental questions. Nowadays numerical simulation techniques and computer capabilities make…
Microgels are soft colloids that, in virtue of their polymeric nature, can react to external stimuli such as temperature or pH by changing their size. The resulting swelling/deswelling transition can be exploited in fundamental research as…
Continuum models of active nematic gels have proved successful to describe a number of biological systems consisting of a population of rodlike motile subunits in a fluid environment. However, in order to get a thorough understanding of the…
Hard-magnetic soft materials (HMSMs) are particulate composites that consist of a soft matrix embedded with particles of high remnant magnetic induction. Since the application of an external magnetic flux induces a body couple in HMSMs, the…
Aggregation processes in systems of planar macromolecules and colloids drive a broad range of phenomena in natural systems and soft materials. Depending on chemical architecture, intermolecular interactions in these systems may favor…
The elastic properties of a soft matter material can be greatly altered by the presence of solid inclusions whose microscopic properties, such as their size and interactions, can have a dramatic effect. In order to shed light on these…
We detail a technique to produce actuators able to bear large strain and respond to an external magnetic field. The material used is PDMS reinforced with nickel coated carbon fibres. Thanks to the nickel functionalisation, the fibre…
Actin filaments, crosslinkers and myosin molecular motors form contractile networks. For instance, the cell cortex is a thin network below the cell membrane ; contraction of the cell cortex allows cells to round up during cell division.…
Standard approaches to magneto-mechanical interactions in thermal magnetic crystalline solids involve Landau functionals in which the lattice anisotropy and the resulting magnetization easy axes are taken explicitly into account. In glassy…
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,…
Collections of simple, self-propelled colloidal particles exhibit complex, emergent dynamical behavior, with promising applications in microrobotics. When confined within a deformable vesicle, self-propelled rods cluster and align,…
The research fields of microfluidics and soft robotics both involve complex small-scale internal channel networks, embedded within a solid structure. This work examines leveraging viscous peeling as a mechanism to create and activate soft…
Future active metamaterials for reconfigurable structural applications require fast, untethered, reversible, and reprogrammable (multimodal) transformability with shape locking. Herein, we aim to construct and demonstrate a…
We study the magneto-elastic coupling behavior of paramagnetic chains in soft polymer gels exposed to external magnetic fields. To this end, a laser scanning confocal microscope is used to observe the morphology of the paramagnetic chains…
In this paper, we report the results from the analysis of a numerical model used for the design of a magnetic linear actuator with applications to fin-based locomotion. Most of the current robotic fish generate bending motion using rotary…
The physical gelation of colloids produces elastic structures that are commonly used to stabilize complex fluids in multiple industries. However, the ability to control the level of elastic modulus of these materials is limited by the…
We report, for the first time, some experimental observations regarding a new type of long range interaction between rigid particles that prevails when they are suspended in an soft elastic gel. A denser particle submerges itself to a…
An important open problem in materials science is whether a direct connection exists between single-particle elastic properties and the macroscopic bulk behavior. Here we address this question by focusing on the archetype of soft colloids:…
Soft robots are powerful tools for manipulating delicate objects, yet their adoption is hindered by two gaps: the lack of integrated tactile sensing and sensor signal distortion caused by actuator deformations. This paper addresses these…
We propose a theoretical approach for calculating effective electric and magnetic properties of composites with field-dependent restructuring of the filler. The theory combines the Bruggeman-Landauer approximation extended to a…