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Superhydrophobic materials are often inspired by nature, whereas metamaterials are engineered to have properties not usually found in naturally occurring materials. In both cases, the key that unlocks their unique properties is structure.…
Optical tweezers are powerful tools for high resolution study of surface properties. Such experiments are traditionally performed by studying the active or the brownian fluctuation of trapped particles in the X, Y, Z direction. Here we find…
Wet-on-wet printing is frequently used in inkjet printing for graphical and industrial applications, where substrates can be coated with a thin liquid film prior to ink drop deposition. Two drops placed close together are expected to…
Understanding contact line dynamics on superhydrophobic surfaces with microscopic structures is essential for designing materials with reduced drag, anti-icing, self-cleaning, and anti-fouling properties. Using numerical simulations, we…
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…
An essential element in the web-trap architecture, the capture silk spun by ecribellate orb spiders consists of glue droplets sitting astride a silk filament. Mechanically this thread presents a mixed solid-liquid behavior unknown to date.…
Movement of soil moisture associated with tree root-water uptake is ecologically important, but technically challenging to measure. Here, the self-potential (SP) method, a passive electrical geophysical method, is used to characterize water…
Electroadhesion (EA) provides electrically switchable adhesion and is a promising mechanism for perching micro aerial robots on smooth surfaces. However, practical implementations of soft and stretchable EA pads for aerial perching remain…
In a recent publication, we have highlighted the potential of phosphonic acid terminated PEG oligomers to functionalize strong UV absorption cerium oxide nanoparticles[1], which yield suspensions that are stable in aqueous or organic…
Our understanding of both structure and dynamics of adsorbed liquids heavily relies on the capillary wave Hamiltonian, but a thorough test of this model is still lacking. Here we study the capillary wave fluctuations of a liquid film with…
Although realizing wetting transitions of droplets spontaneously on solid rough surfaces is quite challenging, it is becoming a key research topic in many practical applications which require highly efficient removal of liquid. We report…
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…
Rheometric measurements on assemblies of wet polystyrene bead assemblies, in steady uniform quasistatic shear flow, for varying liquid content within the small saturation (pendular) range of isolated liquid bridges, are supplemented with a…
Adsorption of small amphiphilic molecules occurs in various biological and technological processes, sometimes desired, the other times unwanted (e.g., contamination). Surface-active molecules preferentially bind to interfaces and affect…
Soft and flexible conductors are essential in the development of soft robots, wearable electronics, as well as electronic tissue and implants. However, conventional soft conductors are inherently characterized by a large change in…
We investigate experimentally the adherence energy $\Gamma$ of model polyacrylate Pressure Sensitive Adhesives (PSAs) with combined large strain rheological measurements in uniaxial extension and an instrumented peel test. We develop a…
The adhesion between dry solid surfaces is typically governed by contact forces, involving surface forces and elasticity. For surfaces immersed in a fluid, out-of-contact adhesion arises due to the viscous resistance to the opening of the…
We investigate different methods of passivating sidewalls of wet etched InAs heterostructures in order to suppress inherent edge conduction that is presumed to occur due to band bending at the surface leading to charge carrier accumulation.…
We report rheological measurements of a noncolloidal particle suspension in a Newtonian solvent at 40% solid volume fraction. An anomalous, frequency-dependent complex viscosity is found under oscillatory shear (OS) flow, whereas a constant…
The effective adhesive properties of heterogeneous thin films are characterized through a combined experimental and theoretical investigation. By bridging scales, we show how variations of elastic or adhesive properties at the microscale…