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Hydrogels are particularly versatile materials that are widely found in both Nature and industry. One key reason for this versatility is their high water content, which lets them dramatically change their volume and many of their mechanical…

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…

We use computer simulations to study the microscopic dynamics of an athermal assembly of soft particles near the fluid-to-solid, jamming transition. Borrowing tools developed to study dynamic heterogeneity near glass transitions, we…

We develop a transferable machine learning model which predicts structural relaxation from amorphous supercooled liquid structures. The trained networks are able to predict dynamic heterogeneity across a broad range of temperatures and time…

We investigated the actuation performances of anisotropic gels driven by mechanical and chemical stimuli, in terms of both deformation processes and stroke--curves, and distinguished between the fast response of gels before diffusion starts…

Ionic microgel particles are intriguing systems in which the properties of thermo-responsive polymeric colloids are enriched by the presence of charged groups. In order to rationalize their properties and predict the behaviour of microgel…

Hydrogels are widespread soft materials, which can serve a wide range of applications. The control over the viscoelastic properties of the gel is of paramount importance. Ongoing environmental issues have raised the consumer's concern…

Biological hydrogels have been increasingly sought after as e.g. wound dressings or scaffolds for regenerative medicine, due to their inherent biofunctionality in biological environments. Especially in moist wound healing, the ideal…

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…

Self-propelling active matter relies on the conversion of energy from the undirected, nanoscopic scale to directed, macroscopic motion. One of the challenges in the design of synthetic active matter lies in the control of dynamic states, or…

The use of probe molecules to extract the local dynamical and structural properties of complex dynamical systems is an age-old technique both in simulations and experiments. A lot of important information which is not immediately accessible…

Soft matter materials and polymers are widely used in the controlled delivery of drugs. Simulation and modeling provide insight at the atomic scale enabling a level of control unavailable to experiments. We present a workflow protocol for…

From pasta to biological tissues to contact lenses, gel and gel-like materials inherently soften as they swell with water. In dry, low-relative-humidity environments, these materials stiffen as they de-swell with water. Here, we use…

Most thermodynamic modeling of hydrogels focused on predicting their final volumes in equilibrium with water, built on Flory's theories for the entropy of mixing and rubber elasticity, and Donnan's equilibrium conditions if polyelectrolyte…

When a rigid object approaches a soft material in a viscous fluid, hydrodynamic stresses arise in the lubricated contact region and deform the soft material. The elastic deformation modifies in turn the flow, hence generating a…

A design for a pump is suggested which is based on well-known peristaltic pumps. In order to simply describe the operation of the proposed pump, an innovative interpretation of low Reynolds number swimmers is presented and thereafter a…

We study the structure and the dynamics in the formation of irreversible gels by means of molecular dynamics simulation of a model system where the gelation transition is due to the random percolation of permanent bonds between neighboring…

We investigate the heterogeneous dynamics in a model, where chemical gelation and glass transition interplay, focusing on the dynamical susceptibility. Two independent mechanisms give raise to the correlations, which are manifested in the…

Climate control of buildings makes up a significant portion of global energy consumption, with groundwater heat pumps providing a suitable alternative. To prevent possibly negative interactions between heat pumps throughout a city, city…

Thermoelectric devices are heat engines, which operate as generators or refrigerators using the conduction electrons as a working fluid. The thermoelectric heat-to-work conversion efficiency has always been typically quite low, but much…