Ultrasonic Spectroscopy of Soft Materials.

Ultrasonic shear wave properties of soft tissues and tissuelike materials.

Determinations of shear wave speeds of sound and attenuation coefficients are reported for soft tissues, a silicone rubber reference material, and a gel used in manufacturing ultrasonically tissue-mimicking materials. Fresh bovine tissues were investigated, including calfskin, liver, cardiac muscle, and striated muscle. Because of the very large shear wave attenuation coefficients, reasonably a...

Quantification of protein-materials interaction by soft colloidal probe spectroscopy.

We present a robust and fast method to quantify the adhesion energy of surface anchored proteins on material surfaces using soft colloidal particles as sensors. The results obtained from studying the adhesion of fibronectin on surfaces with different hydrophobicity were in good agreement with theoretical considerations demonstrating the feasibility of the method.

Optomechanics of Soft Materials

Some molecules change shape upon receiving photons of certain frequencies, but here we study light-induced deformation in ordinary dielectrics with no special optical effects. All dielectrics deform in response to light of all frequencies. We derive a dimensionless number to estimate when light can induce large deformation. For a structure made of soft dielectrics, with feature size comparable ...

Rheology of Soft Materials

Research on soft materials, including colloidal suspensions, glasses, pastes, emulsions, foams, polymer networks, liquid crystals, granular materials, and cells, has captured the interest of scientists and engineers in fields ranging from physics and chemical engineering to materials science and cell biology. Recent advances in rheological methods to probe mechanical responses of these complex ...

Air-coupled Ultrasonic Testing of Materials