Related papers: Robust Myco-Composites as a Platform for Versatile…
As the next step in extraterrestrial exploration, many engineers and scientists around the country revealed their intense interest to enable multiplanetary human life, including colonizing Mars. This study proposes that architecture on Mars…
Glasses have numerous applications due to their exceptional transparency, however, poor fracture and impact resistance limit their applications as an engineering material. One relatively recent approach to improve the mechanical properties…
Living systems continuously sense, integrate, and act on chemical information using multiscale biochemical networks whose dynamics are inherently nonlinear, adaptive, and energy-efficient. Yet, most attempts to harness such "wetware" for…
The plasmodium of the slime mould Physarum polycephalum has recently received significant attention for its value as a highly malleable amorphous computing substrate. In laboratory-based experiments, micro- and nanoscale artificial circuit…
Living systems are built of multiscale-composites: materials formed of components with different properties that are assembled in complex micro- and nano-structures. Such biological multiscale-composites often show outstanding physical…
Engineering spatially organized biofilms for creating adaptive and sustainable biomaterials is a forthcoming mission of synthetic biology. Existing technologies of patterning biofilm materials suffer limitations associated with the high…
Many biological tissues feature a heterogeneous network of fibers whose tensile and bending rigidity contribute substantially to these tissues' elastic properties. Rigidity percolation has emerged as a important paradigm for relating these…
Immotile microbes inhabit nearly every environment on Earth, from soils and sediments to food matrices -- yet how they disperse through these physically confining environments is poorly understood. Here, we show that immotile microbial…
Biological networks have evolved to be highly functional within uncertain environments while remaining extremely adaptable. One of the main contributors to the robustness and evolvability of biological networks is believed to be their…
In this article, a novel explicit approach for designing complex thin-walled structures based on the Moving Morphable Component (MMC) method is proposed, which provides a unified framework to systematically address various design issues,…
Particles with directional interactions are promising building blocks for new functional materials and may serve as models for biological structures. Mutually attractive nanoparticles that are deformable due to flexible surface groups, for…
Colloidal particles dispersed in liquid crystals can form new materials with tunable elastic and electro-optic properties. In a periodic `blue phase' host, particles should template into colloidal crystals with potential uses in photonics,…
Colloidal molecules are designed to mimic their molecular analogues through their anisotropic shape and interactions. However, current experimental realizations are missing the structural flexibility present in real molecules thereby…
Nature is remarkably adept at using interfaces to build structures, encapsulate reagents, and regulate biological processes. Inspired by Nature, we describe flexible polymer-based ribbons, termed "mesoscale polymers" (MSPs), to modulate…
Certain bacteria form filamentous colonies when the cells fail to separate after dividing. In Bacillus subtilis, Bacillus thermus, and cyanobacteria, the filaments can wrap into complex supercoiled structures as the cells grow. The…
A new kinetic model for the dynamics of myxobacteria colonies on flat surfaces is derived formally, and first analytical and numerical results are presented. The model is based on the assumption of hard binary collisions of two different…
Mycelium is a promising biomaterial based on fungal mycelium, a highly porous, nanofibrous structure. Scanning electron micrographs are used to characterize its network, but the currently available tools for nanofibrous microstructures do…
Biological materials achieve directional reinforcement with oriented assemblies of anisotropic building blocks. One such example is the nanocomposite structure of keratinized epithelium on the toe pad of tree frogs, in which hexagonal…
Many biological materials must couple mechanical strength with the ability to rapidly self-assemble at a specific location. In particular, biomolecular condensates readily self-assemble via phase separation, but may also need to resist…
This review paper summarizes the current state-of-art and challenges for the future developments of fiber-reinforced composites for structural applications with multifunctional capabilities. After a brief analysis of the reasons of the…