Programmable soft materials have shown applications in artificial muscles, robotics, flexible electronics, and biomedicines due to their adaptive structural transformations. As an ordered material, directional shape changes of liquid crystal elastomer (LCE) can be easily achieved via external stimuli thanks its anisotropic elasticity. However, harnessing the interplay between molecular ordering...

A growth model for the low pressure chemical vapor deposition (LPCVD) of polycrystalline ZnO thin films is proposed. This model is based on experimental observations of the surfacemorphology and crystallographic orientations of the layers at different thicknesses and growth temperatures. It is shown that the films preferred orientation evolves from c-axis to aaxis as the growth temperature is i...

We introduce a modified phase field crystal (MPFC) technique that self-consistently incorporates rapid strain relaxation alongside the usual plastic deformation and multiple crystal orientations featured by the traditional phase field crystal (PFC) technique. Our MPFC formalism can be used to study a host of important phase transformation phenomena in material processing that require rapid stra...

It is well known that the crystallization of liquids often initiates at interfaces to foreign solid surfaces. In this study, using polarized light optical microscopy, atomic force microscopy (AFM), and wide-angle X-ray scattering (WAXS), we investigate effect substrate–material interactions on nucleation in an ensemble polyethylene oxide (PEO) droplets graphite amorphous polystyrene (PS). The m...

Si nanocrystals grown on cubic SiC have been characterized using high-resolution transmission electron microscopy. At lower temperatures nanocrystals grow in two different orientations, whereas at higher temperatures they grow in a single preferred orientation. The nanocrystals are shown to be unstrained; in some cases possibly due to the presence of a thin amorphous wetting layer.

A framework for inverse design of tuning mechanical properties polycrystalline brittle materials is presented using artificial intelligence (AI). Crystalline solids, which often exhibit distinct at different orientations, can be used as building blocks composites. However, the space geometry and crystal misorientations typically intractable, all possible solutions cannot discovered experiment o...

We study the 3-D strain evolution of the northern Aegean and the vertical coherency of deformation. We observe that finite strain orientations in the mantle inferred from published shear-wave (SKS) fast polarization orientations, midto upper-crustal stretching lineations in metamorphic core complexes of mainly Miocene age, and the gradient in regional crustal thickness variations, are subparall...