Related papers: Programming hydrogel adhesion with engineered poly…
A facile route for the fabrication of surface-attached hydrogel thin films with well-controlled chemistry and tailored architecture on wide range of thickness from nanometers to micrometers is reported. The synthesis, which consists in…
The structural complexity of soft gels is at the origin of a versatile mechanical response that allows for large deformations, controlled elastic recovery and toughness in the same material. A limit to exploiting the potential of such…
Mechanical metamaterials have continued to offer unprecedented tunability in mechanical properties, but most designs to date have prioritized attaining high stiffness and strength while sacrificing deformability. The emergence of woven…
At the heart of the structured architecture and complex dynamics of biological systems are specific and timely interactions operated by biomolecules. In many instances, biomolecular agents are spatially confined to flexible lipid membranes…
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…
Hybrid double-network hydrogels are a class of material that comprise transiently and permanently crosslinked polymer networks and exhibit an enhanced toughness that is believed to be governed by the yielding of the transient polymer…
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…
Many biological systems can form strong adhesion to various materials with complex shapes. The adhesion is further switchable between strongly adhering and completely non-adhering in a simple and fast manner. By contrast, no engineering…
Inspired by the cellular design of plant tissue, we present a new approach to make versatile, tough, highly water-swelling composites. We embed highly swelling hydrogel particles inside tough, water-permeable, elastomeric matrices. The…
Adding dynamic bonds in polymer networks enables reprocessing and recycling; however the full impact of reversible bonds on dynamic network mechanics remains unclear. We build model dynamic networks and observe substantial deviations from…
Gel-elastomer composites, comprising an active swellable hydrogel and a passive elastomer, are a compelling class of programmable material systems (PMS) capable of shape morphing under multiphysics actuation. The precise design of the…
Hydrogel consists of a crosslinked polymer matrix imbibed with a solvent such as water at volume fractions that can exceed 90\%. They are important in many scientific and engineering applications due to their tunable physiochemical…
Evolution in time-varying environments naturally leads to adaptable biological systems that can easily switch functionalities. Advances in the synthesis of environmentally-responsive materials therefore open up the possibility of creating a…
Tissue engineering aims to grow artificial tissues \emph{in vitro} to replace those in the body that have been damaged through age, trauma or disease. A recent approach to engineer artificial cartilage involves seeding cells within a…
Additive manufacturing methods together with topology optimization have enabled the creation of multiscale structures with controlled spatially-varying material microstructure. However, topology optimization or inverse design of such…
Hydrogels are soft materials engineered to suit a multitude of applications that exploit their tunable mechanochemical properties. Dynamic hydrogels employing noncovalent, physically crosslinked networks dominated by either enthalpic or…
With the increasing demand for personalized health monitoring, wearable sensors have gained attention in medical diagnostics and physiological tracking. Hydrogels, known for their mechanical properties and similarity to biological tissues,…
Magnetic soft robots embedded with hard magnetic particles enable untethered actuation via external magnetic fields, offering remote, rapid, and precise control, which is highly promising for biomedical applications. However, designing such…
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…
We consider the slow and athermal deformations of amorphous solids and show how the ensuing sequence of discrete plastic rearrangements can be mapped onto a directed network. The network topology reveals a set of highly connected regions…