Chiral topographic instability in shrinking spheres

Abstract Many biological structures exhibit intriguing morphological patterns adapted to environmental cues, which contribute their important functions and also inspire material designs. Here, we report a chiral wrinkling topography in shrinking core–shell spheres, as observed excessively dehydrated passion fruit experimentally demonstrated silicon core–shells under air extraction. Upon shrinkage deformation, the surface initially buckles into buckyball pattern (periodic hexagons pentagons) then transforms mode. The neighbouring cellular can further interact with each other, resulting secondary symmetry breaking formation of two types topological network. We develop model derive universal scaling law understand underlying morphoelastic mechanism effectively describe predict such far beyond critical instability threshold. Moreover, show that characteristic local perturbation be harnessed stably grasp small-sized objects various shapes made different stiff soft materials. Our results not only reveal topographies, providing fundamental insights morphogenesis deformed spheres are ubiquitous real world, but demonstrate potential applications adaptive grasping based on delicate localization.