The Faraday Discussion Mechanochemistry: From Functional Solids to Single Molecules which took place 21-23 May 2014 in Montreal, Canada, brought together a diversity of academic and industrial researchers, experimentalists and theoreticians, students, as well as experienced researchers, to discuss the changing face of mechanochemistry, an area with a long history and deep connections to manufac...

The ability to photoregulate enzyme activities could provide important new opportunities for development of diagnostic assays, sequential bioprocessing, and lab assays in both traditional and microfluidic formats. We show here that the photoinduced changes in the size and hydration of a "smart" polymer chain coil can be used to regulate substrate access and enzyme activity when conjugated to th...

Various approaches to sensing forces and generating forces are presented in the context of building human-technology interfaces capable of communicating force information. Addressing the need for various types of force transducers, special emphasis is given to opportunities created by new classes of materials, including smart materials, electronic polymers, and magnetic materials. Basic physica...

Food packaging has a crucial function in the modern food industry. New technologies seek to meet consumers and industrial's demands. Changes related production, sale practices consumers' lifestyles, along with environmental awareness advance new areas of knowledge (such as nanotechnology or biotechnology), act driving forces develop smart packages that can extend shelf-life, keeping supervising...

Here, a facile bottom-up nanofabrication technology for making smart superhydrophobic coatings with switchable wettability and tunable optical properties by integrating shape memory polymers (SMPs) templated macroporous photonic crystals is reported. Thermoresponsive efforts exhibited polyurethane-based copolymer enable reversible microstructural transitions between “memorized” permanent config...