Publications related to Soft matter

Localized Ionic Reinforcement of Double Network Granular Hydrogels

Nature produces soft materials with fascinating combinations of mechanical properties. For example, the mussel byssus embodies a combination of stiffness and toughness, a feature that is unmatched by synthetic hydrogels. Key to enabling these excellent mec ...

Wiley-V C H Verlag Gmbh2024

From Surfactants to 3D Printing: How Ion-Chelator Pair Interactions Affect the Mechanical Properties of Bioinspired Materials

Gaia De Angelis

The remarkable adaptability observed in marine ecosystems has often inspired researchers when developing new soft materials. The research undertaken in this thesis explores how ion chelator pair interactions influence the mechanical properties of bioinspir ...

EPFL2024

Controlling the Microstructure and Composition of 3D Printed Soft Load-Bearing Hydrogels

Matteo Hirsch

Hydrogels are among the first materials expressly designed for their use in biomedicine. However, state-of-the-art applications of hydrogels are severely limited because they are typically either too soft or too brittle such that they cannot bear significa ...

EPFL2023

Nanoscale local modification of PMMA refractive index by tip-enhanced femtosecond pulsed laser irradiation

Mihai Adrian Ionescu

Tip-enhanced optical effects have enabled a wide palette of nanoscale investigation techniques and recently they were successfully used to modify and manipulate matter with nanoscale spatial resolution. We contribute to this latter area by reporting a viab ...

ELSEVIER2023

Deformation and Fracture of Tough Microstructured Hydrogels

Michael David Kessler

Many natural materials are structured on different length scales. This structuring often leads to an intricate interplay between soft and stiff components, which significantly improves the fracture toughness of these materials. A class of soft material tha ...

EPFL2022

Highly Integrated Multi-Material Fibers for Soft Robotics

Fabien Sorin, Stella Andréa Françoise Laperrousaz, Hritwick Banerjee, Andreas Leber, Chaoqun Dong, Nicola Bartolomei, Bastien Schyrr

Soft robots are envisioned as the next generation of safe biomedical devices in minimally invasive procedures. Yet, the difficulty of processing soft materials currently limits the size, aspect-ratio, manufacturing throughput, as well as, the design comple ...

WILEY2022

MaxwellNet: Physics-driven deep neural network training based on Maxwell's equations

Demetri Psaltis, Joowon Lim

Maxwell's equations govern light propagation and its interaction with matter. Therefore, the solution of Maxwell's equations using computational electromagnetic simulations plays a critical role in understanding light-matter interaction and designing optic ...

AIP Publishing2022

Enhancement of Pressure-Sensitive Adhesive by CO2 Laser Treatment

Dario Floreano, Yegor Piskarev, Jun Shintake, Vivek Ramachandran, Michael Dickey, Jianhang Yang

Pressure-sensitive adhesives (PSAs) are polymeric films that can be adhered to and detached from surfaces without leaving residue. Researchers are looking to enhance the bond strength between PSAs and different substrates. It can be achieved by tuning PSA' ...

2022

Soft functional fibers for mechanical sensing and actuation

Andreas Leber

The measurement and generation of mechanical deformations is a key functionality in health monitoring, human-machine interaction, and soft robotics. However, current methods typically rely on small and hard transducers, which result in poor performance, cu ...

EPFL2021

Motile dislocations knead odd crystals into whorls

Sofia Magkiriadou, Alexis Poncet

The competition between thermal fluctuations and potential forces governs the stability of matter in equilibrium, in particular the proliferation and annihilation of topological defects. However, driving matter out of equilibrium allows for a new class of ...

NATURE PORTFOLIO2022