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

Electronic Multi-material Fibers and Textiles: Novel Designs and Applications

Chaoqun Dong

Flexible electronics and particularly soft fibers and textiles are becoming key components in rapidly developing fields such as robotics, health and personal care, sensing, or implantable and wearable devices. Thus far however, the ability to impart soft a ...

EPFL2021

Design and Fabrication of Stretchable Photonic Fibers

Nicola Bartolomei

Optical fibers have reshaped the technological landscape, from optical networks and high-speed data communication to in situ imaging and non-invasive surgery methods. The revolution allowed by these fibers has been made possible by its fabrication method, ...

EPFL2021

3D Printing of Strong and Tough Double Network Granular Hydrogels

Esther Amstad, Matteo Hirsch, Alvaro Lino Boris Charlet

Many soft natural tissues display a fascinating set of mechanical properties that remains unmatched by manmade counterparts. These unprecedented mechanical properties are achieved through an intricate interplay between the structure and locally varying the ...

2020

Soft matter probed by nonlinear scattering: self-assembly, interfaces, hydration, and long-range order

Jan Dedic

All organisms are made to a large extent of soft matter - macromolecules such as proteins and polysaccharides, or assemblies of small molecules such as lipids embedded in an aqueous environment. Understanding the role of order in soft matter presents a cha ...

EPFL2020

Bioinspired Viscoelastic Capsules: Delivery Vehicles and Beyond

Esther Amstad, Gianluca Nicolas Etienne, Irvine Lian Hao Ong

Microcapsules are often used as individually dispersed carriers of active ingredients to prolong their shelf life or to protect premature reactions with substances contained in the surrounding. This study goes beyond this application and employs microcapsu ...

Wiley2019

Experimental station Bernina at SwissFEL: condensed matter physics on femtosecond time scales investigated by X-ray diffraction and spectroscopic methods

Christopher Alexander Arrell, Christoph Peter Hauri, Paul Beaud, Giulia Fulvia Mancini, Jochen Rittmann

The Bernina instrument at the SwissFEL Aramis hard X-ray free-electron laser is designed for studying ultrafast phenomena in condensed matter and material science. Ultrashort pulses from an optical laser system covering a large wavelength range can be used ...

International Union of Crystallography (IUCr)2019

Light Confinement and Nonlinear Light-Matter Interaction in Semiconductor Photonic Crystal Cavities

Mohamed Sabry Abdel-Aliem Mohamed

The ability to control and manipulate light is a fundamental aspect that is at the very core of the development of integrated photonic circuits. It is desirable to achieve such control down to a scale that is comparable to or smaller than the wavelength of ...

EPFL2018

Watching ultrafast responses of structure and magnetism in condensed matter with momentum-resolved probes

Fabrizio Carbone, Paul Beaud

We present a non-comprehensive review of some representative experimental studies in crystalline condensed matter systems where the effects of intense ultrashort light pulses are probed using x-ray diffraction and photoelectron spectroscopy. On an ultrafas ...

2017

Architecture and coevolution of allosteric materials

Matthieu Wyart, Riccardo Ravasio, Carolina Brito Carvalho dos Santos

We introduce a numerical scheme to evolve functional elastic materials that can accomplish a specified mechanical task. In this scheme, the number of solutions, their spatial architectures, and the correlations among them can be computed. As an example, we ...

National Academy of Sciences2017

Engineering of light confinement in strongly scattering disordered media

Laurent Balet, Massimo Gurioli

Disordered photonic materials can diffuse and localize light through random multiple scattering, offering opportunities to study mesoscopic phenomena, control light-matter interactions, and provide new strategies for photonic applications. Light transport ...

Nature Publishing Group2014