High‐Performance Biomechanical Energy Harvester Enabled by Switching Interfacial Adhesion via Hydrogen Bonding and Phase Separation (Adv. Funct. Mater. 38/2022)

Materials and Wireless Microfluidic Systems for Electronics Capable of Chemical Dissolution on Demand (Adv. Funct. Mater. 92015)

Wetting and phase separation in soft adhesion.

In the classic theory of solid adhesion, surface energy drives deformation to increase contact area whereas bulk elasticity opposes it. Recently, solid surface stress has been shown also to play an important role in opposing deformation of soft materials. This suggests that the contact line in soft adhesion should mimic that of a liquid droplet, with a contact angle determined by surface tensio...

Interfacial propulsion by directional adhesion

The rough integument of water-walking arthropods is well known to be responsible for their water-repellency [1, 2, 3, 4]; however, water-repellent surfaces generally experience reduced traction at an air-water interface [5, 6, 7, 8]. A conundrum then arises as to how such creatures generate significant propulsive forces while retaining their water-repellency. We here demonstrate through a serie...

Metamaterials: Snapping Mechanical Metamaterials under Tension (Adv. Mater. 39/2015).

By exploiting snap-through instabilities, D. Pasini and co-workers design a damage-tolerant mechanical metamaterial that snaps sequentially under tension, thereby accommodating a very large deformation up to 150%. On page 5931, they describe how the nonlinear mechanical response of the metamaterial can be robustly programmed by tuning the architecture of its unit cell.

Adhesion between silica surfaces due to hydrogen bonding

The adhesion between surfaces can be enhanced significantly by the presence of hydrogen bonding. Confined water at the nanoscale can display behaviour remarkably different to bulk water due to the formation of hydrogen bonds between two surfaces. In this work we investigate the role of confined water on the interaction between hydrophilic surfaces, specifically the effect of organic contaminant...