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The potential of graphene for use in photonic applications was evidenced by recent demonstrations of modulators, polarisation rotators, and isolators. These promising yet preliminary results raise crucial questions: what is the optimal…
Curvature and mechanics are intimately connected for thin materials, and this coupling between geometry and physical properties is readily seen in folded structures from intestinal villi and pollen grains, to wrinkled membranes and…
We study the bending of a book-like system, comprising a stack of elastic plates coupled through friction. The behavior of this layered system is rich and nontrivial, with a non-additive enhancement of the apparent stiffness and a…
A self-consistent model is developed to investigate attachment / detachment kinetics of two soft, deformable microspheres with irregular surface and coated with flexible binding ligands. The model highlights how the microscale binding…
Materials with J-shaped stress-strain behavior under uniaxial stretching, where strength increases as deformation progresses, have been developed through various materials designs. On the other hand, polymer materials that progressively…
The capabilities of additive manufacturing have facilitated the design and production of mechanical metamaterials with diverse unit cell geometries. Establishing linkages between the vast design space of unit cells and their effective…
We present a multi-scale density functional theory (DFT) informed molecular dynamics and tight-binding (TB) approach to capture the interdependent atomic and electronic structures of twisted bilayer graphene. We calibrate the flat band…
Emerging multi-material 3D printing techniques have paved the way for the rational design of metamaterials with not only complex geometries but also arbitrary distributions of multiple materials within those geometries. Varying the spatial…
When manufacturing parts using material extrusion additive manufacturing and anisotropic polymers, the mechanical properties of a manufactured component are strongly dependent on the print trajectory orientation. We conduct non-planar…
We present a mathematical model of polymer bilayers that undergo large bending deformations when actuated by non-mechanical stimuli such as thermal effects. The simple model captures a large class of nonlinear bending effects and can be…
Materials designed by nature commonly exhibit functional grading and laminated structures, particularly when intended for enhanced impact protection. Synthetic materials have also found success in exploiting this concept with fully dense…
The self-assembly of polymer grafted nanoparticles is more and more used in the field of functional materials. However, there is still a lack of analysis on the dynamic transformation paths of different self-assembly morphologies, which…
Diamondynes are a recently synthesized three-dimensional carbon allotrope, with interlocked and movable sublattices that introduce deformation modes not present in standard architected materials. Here, we report the first multiscale…
This paper is motivated by the complex blister patterns sometimes seen in thin elastic films on thick, compliant substrates. These patterns are often induced by an elastic misfit which compresses the film. Blistering permits the film to…
Acoustic metamaterials offer exceptional control over wave propagation, but their potential remains unfulfilled due to fabrication constraints. Conventional processes yield mostly rigid, planar structures, whereas soft-matter alternatives…
We propose a solution strategy for a multimaterial minimum compliance topology optimization problem, which consists in finding the optimal allocation of a finite number of candidate (possibly anisotropic) materials inside a reference…
Soft composite solids, comprising discrete inclusions embedded within a compliant matrix, are emerging candidates for engineering synthetic tissues and soft robotic materials. Current strategies for controlling their nonlinear mechanics,…
Shape-morphing structures possess the ability to change their shapes from one state to another, and therefore, offer great potential for a broad range of applications. A typical paradigm of morphing is transforming from an initial…
Through extensive Monte Carlo simulations, we systematically study the effect of chain stiffness on the packing ability of linear polymers composed of hard spheres in extremely confined monolayers, corresponding effectively to 2D films.…
Designing a robot or structure that can fold itself into a target shape is a process that involves challenges originated from multiple sources. For example, the designer of rigid self-folding robots must consider foldability from geometric…