Related papers: Strong and Highly Switchable Soft Sticky Adhesives
One of the trendsetting themes in soft robotics has been the goal of developing the ultimate universal soft robotic gripper. One that is capable of manipulating items of various shapes, sizes, thicknesses, textures, and weights. All the…
We design and synthesize unentangled associative polymers carrying unprecedented high fractions of stickers, up to eight per Kuhn segment, that can form strong pairwise hydrogen bonding of $\sim20k_BT$ without microphase separation. The…
Numerous soft materials jam into an amorphous solid at high packing fraction. This non-equilibrium phase transition is best understood in the context of a model system in which particles repel elastically when they overlap. Recently,…
The adhesion of two-dimensional (2D) materials to other surfaces is so far believed to be a solid-solid mechanical contact. Here, we conduct both atomistic simulations and theoretical modeling to show that there exists a reversible…
Wearable electronics are emerging as essential tools for health monitoring, haptic feedback, and human-computer interactions. While stable contact at the device-body interface is critical for these applications, it remains challenging due…
Dry adhesives rely on short-ranged intermolecular bonds, hence requiring a low elastic modulus to conform to the surface roughness of the adhered material. Under external loads, however, soft adhesives accumulate strain energy, which…
Surface stresses have recently emerged as a key player in the mechanics of highly compliant solids. The classic theories of contact mechanics describe adhesion with a compliant substrate as a competition between surface energies driving…
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…
Recently, a simple and elegant "dimple" model was introduced by McMeeking et al. (Adv Eng Mat 12(5), 389-397, 2010) to show a mechanism for a bistable adhesive system involving a surface with a shallow depression. The system shows, at least…
Soft supramolecular materials are promising for the design of innovative and highly tunable adhesives. These materials are composed of polymer chains functionalized by strongly interacting moieties, sometimes called "stickers". In order to…
The exotic properties of two-dimensional (2D) materials and 2D heterostructures, built by forming heterogeneous multi-layered stacks, have been widely explored across a number of subject matters following the goal to invent, design, and…
In superconductivity, electrons exhibit unique macroscopic collective quantum behavior that is the key for many modern quantum technologies. This electron behavior stems vastly from coupling to a correlated motion of atoms in the material,…
As robotics advances toward integrating soft structures, anthropomorphic shapes, and complex tasks, soft and highly stretchable mechanotransducers are becoming essential. To reliably measure tactile and proprioceptive data while ensuring…
Vertebrate animals benefit from a combination of rigidity for structural support and softness for adaptation. Similarly, integrating rigidity and softness can enhance the versatility of soft robotics. However, the challenges associated with…
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…
Resistive switching (RS) devices, based on soft materials such as organic, biomolecules as well as natural plant extracts etc., has emerged as a promising alternative to the conventional memory technologies. They offer simple device…
The modelling of the adherence energy during peeling of Pressure Sensitive Adhesives (PSA) has received much attention since the 1950's, uncovering several factors that aim at explaining their high adherence on most substrates, such as the…
Soft robots are intrinsically capable of adapting to different environments by changing their shape in response to interaction forces with the environment. However, sensing and feedback are still required for higher level decisions and…
Tactile sensation is essential for humans to recognize objects. Various devices have been developed in the past for tactile presentation by electrostatic force, which are easy to configure devices, but there is currently no such device that…
Integrating silicone with non-extensible materials is a common strategy used in the fabrication of fluidically-driven soft actuators, yet conventional approaches often rely on irreversible adhesives or embedding processes that are…