Related papers: Strong and Highly Switchable Soft Sticky Adhesives
In this study, the adhesion-detachment behaviour of a gecko-inspired adhesive pad was investigated to understand the on/off switching mechanisms of adhesion in gecko feet. A macroscopic spatula model was fabricated using silicone rubber,…
A buckled sheet offers a reservoir of material that can be unfurled at a later time. For sufficiently thin yet stiff materials, this geometric process has a striking mechanical feature: when the slack runs out, the material locks to further…
The most direct measurement of adhesion is the pull-off force, i.e. the tensile force necessary to separate two solids in contact. For a given interface, it depends on various experimental parameters, including separation speed, contact age…
Wrinkling patterns at the metallized surface of thin polymer films are shown to be sensitive to the sticky or slippery character of the polymer/substrate interface (titanium coating, polystyrene film and coated silicon substrate). Selective…
Thermo-responsive hydrogels are smart materials that rapidly switch between hydrophilic (swollen) and hydrophobic (shrunken) states when heated past a threshold temperature, resulting in order-of-magnitude changes in gel volume. Modelling…
The development of wearable sensing systems for sports performance tracking, rehabilitation, and injury prevention has driven growing demand for smart garments that combine comfort, durability, and accurate motion detection. This paper…
Soft modular robots enable more flexibility and safer interaction with the changing environment than traditional robots. However, it has remained challenging to create deformable connectors that can be integrated into soft machines. In this…
Blisters, delaminated regions that form in multilayered structures under compressive stresses, are observed across a wide range of length scales, from two-dimensional materials to protective coatings and laminated composites. Far from being…
Based on experiments and 3-D simulations, we show that a soft elastic film during adhesion and debonding from a rigid flat surface undergoes morphological transitions to pillars, labyrinths and cavities, all of which have the same lateral…
An interesting recent paper by Menga, Carbone & Dini (MCD, 2018, [1]), suggests that in sliding adhesive contacts, the contact area should increase due to tangential shear stresses at the interface, assumed to be constant and corresponding…
At the molecular scale there are strong attractive interactions between surfaces, yet few macroscopic surfaces are sticky. Extensive simulations of contact by adhesive surfaces with roughness on nanometer to micrometer scales are used to…
Natural systems, such as tendons and spider silk, demonstrate how the combination of strength and stretchability can be effectively achieved by integrating stiff and flexible network structures. Inspired by these systems, we developed a…
We grafted polyacrylic acid brushes containing cysteine side chains at a defined surface density on planar lipid membranes. Specular X-ray reflectivity data indicated that the addition of Cd2+ ions induces the compaction of the polymer…
Soft machines typically exhibit slow locomotion speed and low manipulation strength because of intrinsic limitations of soft materials. Here, we present a generic design principle that harnesses mechanical instability for a variety of…
Multivalent particles have the ability to form multiple bonds to a substrate. Hence, a multivalent interaction can be strong, even if the individual bonds are weak. However, much more interestingly, multivalency greatly increases the…
A mechanistic understanding of adhesion in soft materials is critical in the fields of transportation (tires, gaskets, seals), biomaterials, micro-contact printing, and soft robotics. Measurements have long demonstrated that the apparent…
Adhesion requires molecular contact, and natural adhesives employ mechanical gradients to achieve complete (conformal) contact to maximize adhesion. Intuitively, one expects that the higher the modulus of the top layer, the lower will be…
High hardness and toughness are generally considered mutually exclusive properties for single-crystal ceramics. Combining experiments and ab initio molecular dynamics (AIMD) atomistic simulations at room temperature, we demonstrate that…
Instability patterns of rolling up a sleeve appear more intricate than the ones of walking over a rug on floor, both characterized as uniaxially compressed soft-film/stiff-substrate systems. This can be explained by curvature effects. To…
Soft robots have immense potential given their inherent safety and adaptability, but challenges in soft actuator forces and design constraints have limited scaling up soft robots to larger sizes. Electrothermal shape memory alloy (SMA)…