Phys.org May 27, 2022 Creating materials with structure that is independently controllable at a range of scales requires breaking naturally occurring hierarchies. Breaking these hierarchies can be achieved via the decoupling of building block attributes from structure during assembly. An international team of researchers (the Netherlands, USA (University of Michigan, University of Pennsylvania, Canada) demonstrated that shape and interaction decoupling occur in colloidal cuboids suspended in evaporating emulsion droplets. The resulting colloidal clusters serve as “preassembled” mesoscale building blocks for larger-scale structures. They showed that clusters of up to nine particles form mesoscale building blocks with geometries that are independent […]
Tag Archives: Synthetic materials
Synthetic materials mimic living creatures
Science Daily June 22, 2020 Researchers at Northwestern University have developed hybrid light-responsive soft materials composed of peptide amphiphile supramolecular polymers chemically bonded to spiropyran-based networks that expel water in response to visible light. The supramolecular polymers form a reversibly deformable and water-draining skeleton that mechanically reinforces the hybrid and can also be aligned by printing methods. The noncovalent skeleton embedded in the network enables faster bending and flattening actuation of objects, as well as longer steps during the light-driven crawling motion of macroscopic films. As the material can be designed in different shapes, it could play a role in […]