Shape memory polymers (SMPs) are a class of active, deformable materials that can switch
between a temporary shape, which can be freely designed, and their original shape. With …

Morphological instabilities and surface wrinkling of soft materials such as gels and biological
tissues are of growing interest to a number of academic disciplines including soft …

In materials of all types, hysteresis and toughness are usually correlated. For example, a
highly stretchable elastomer or hydrogel of a single polymer network has low hysteresis and …

Hydrogels have been developed since the 1960s for applications in personal care,
medicine, and engineering. Evidence has accumulated that hydrogels under prolonged …

Elastomers and gels can often deform multiple times their original length. The stretchability
is insensitive to small cuts in the samples, but reduces markedly when the cuts are large. We …

The contact behavior of solid materials is determined by the system geometry, externally
applied loads and internal adhesive forces, and by the materials properties. As the size and …

Metallic nanogaps with metal–metal separations of less than 10 nm have many applications
in nanoscale photonics and electronics. However, their fabrication remains a considerable …

Underwater adhesion has been the focus of many recent developments motivated by
potential biomedical applications. Although most literature on underwater adhesives has …

The free surface of a thin soft polymer film is often found to become unstable and self-
organizes into various meso-scale structures. In this article we classify the instability of a thin …

Polymer materials have been widely used in industrial, agricultural, engineering, medical,
electronic, and biological fields because of their excellent and diverse properties (eg …