Elastic Building Blocks for Confined Sheets

Elastic building blocks for confined sheets.

We study the behavior of thin elastic sheets that are bent and strained under a weak, smooth confinement. We show that the emerging shapes exhibit the coexistence of two types of domains. A focused-stress patch is subject to a geometric, piecewise-inextensibility constraint, whereas a diffuse-stress region is characterized by a mechanical constraint-the dominance of a single component of the st...

Using confined bacteria as building blocks to generate fluid flow.

In many technological applications, materials are transported by fluid flow at micro/nanometer scales. Conventionally, macroscopic apparatuses, such as syringe pumps, are used to drive the flow. This work explores the possibility of utilizing motile bacteria as microscopic pumps. We used micro-fabricated structures to confine smooth-swimming bacteria in a prescribed configuration. The flagella ...

Reshaping nemato-elastic sheets.

We consider three-dimensional reshaping of thin nemato-elastic sheets containing half-charged defects upon nematic-isotropic transition. Gaussian curvature, that can be evaluated analytically when the nematic texture is known, differs from zero in the entire domain and has a dipole or hexapole singularity, respectively, at defects of positive or negative sign. The latter kind of defects appears...

Electron-rich rods as building blocks for Sb strips and Te sheets.

We analyze the bonding in a number of networks of heavy main group elements comprised of finite-length linear chains fused at right angles. Isolated linear chain building blocks may be understood easily by analogy with three-orbital four-electron "hypervalent" bonding picture in such molecules as I(3)(-) and XeF(2). After deriving the appropriate electron-counting rules for such linear units, w...

Building Blocks for Nanotransporters