The concept of the ideal elastomeric gel is extended to polyelectrolyte gels and verified using a polyacrylamide-co-acrylic acid hydrogel as a model material system. A comparison between mixing and ion osmosis shows that the mixing osmosis is larger than the ion osmosis for small swelling ratios, while the ion osmosis dominates for large swelling ratios. We show further that the non-Gaussian ch...

Soft structures with rationally designed architectures capable of large, nonlinear deformation present opportunities for unprecedented, highly tunable devices and machines. However, the highly dissipative nature of soft materials intrinsically limits or prevents certain functions, such as the propagation of mechanical signals. Here we present an architected soft system composed of elastomeric b...

BACKGROUND The present study was done to evaluate the dimensional stability and surface quality of Type IV gypsum casts retrieved from disinfected elastomeric impression materials. MATERIALS AND METHODS In an in vitro study contaminated impression material with known bacterial species was disinfected with disinfectants followed by culturing the swab sample to assess reduction in level of bact...

Optofluidics is a rapidly growing versatile branch of adaptive optics including a wide variety of applications such as tunable beam shaping tools, mirrors, apertures, and lenses. In this review, we focus on recent developments in optofluidic lenses, which arguably forms the most important part of optofluidics devices. We report first on a number of general characteristics and characterization m...

Patterned structures of flexible, stretchable, electrically conductive materials on soft substrates could lead to novel electronic devices with unique mechanical properties allowing them to bend, fold, stretch or conform to their environment. For the last decade, research on improving the stretchability of circuits on elastomeric substrates has made significant progresses but designing printed ...

BACKGROUND Managing "spaghetti syndrome," the tangle of therapeutic cables, tubes, and cords at patients' bedsides, can be challenging. OBJECTIVES To assess nurses' perceptions of the effectiveness of a novel banding device in management of spaghetti syndrome. METHODS A simple color-coded elastomeric banding strap with ribbed flaps was attached to bed rails of adult critical care patients t...