"Smart" materials are an emerging category of multifunctional materials with physical or chemical properties that can be controllably altered in response to an external stimulus. By combining the standard properties of the advanced material with the unique ability to recognize and adapt in response to a change in their environment, these materials are finding applications in areas such as sensi...

The added-value behind reversible bonds is the possibility to develop responsive structurally dynamic materials which can adapt their constitution and, hence, properties to external stimuli. In recent years, much effort has been devoted to the design and synthesis of single-chain polymer nanoparticles (SCNPs) that can be reversibly assembled / disassembled in response to external environmental ...

The development of polymers that can spontaneously repair themselves after mechanical damage would significantly improve the safety, lifetime, energy efficiency and environmental impact of man-made materials. Most approaches to self-healing materials require the input of external energy, healing agents, solvent or plasticizer. Despite intense research in this area, the synthesis of a stiff mate...

We study theoretically the equilibrium structure, as well as the response under external load, of characteristic carbon-based materials. The materials considered include diamond, amorphous carbon (a-C), “amorphous diamond” and nanocomposite amorphous carbon (na-C). A universal bulk-modulus versus density curve is obeyed by all structures we consider. We calculate the dependence of elastic const...

Supramolecular materials based on host-guest interactions should exhibit high selectivity and external stimuli-responsiveness. Among various stimuli, redox and photo stimuli are useful for its wide application. An external stimuli-responsive adhesive system between CD host-gels (CD gels) and guest molecules modified glass substrates (guest Sub) is focused. Here, the selective adhesion between h...

The price of energy to separate tightly bound electron-hole pair (or charge-transfer state) and extract freely movable charges from low-mobility materials represents fundamental losses for many low-cost photovoltaic devices. In bulk heterojunction (BHJ) polymer solar cells (PSCs), approximately 50% of the total efficiency lost among all energy loss pathways is due to the photogenerated charge c...

The surfaces of NaY zeolite particles were modified by the alkylsilylation of n-octadecyltrichlorosilane (OTS). Two kinds of modified NaY zeolites were prepared; one with its external surface partially and the other fully covered with alkylsilyl groups. Since the size of OTS is bigger than the pore diameter of NaY, it is attached on the external surface, leaving the internal pore accessible to ...

Despite its long history, the Theory of Characteristic Modes has only been utilized in antenna design for perfect electric conductors. This is due to computational problems associated with dielectrics and magnetic materials. In particular, the symmetric form of the PMCHWT surface formulation for the Method of Moments (MoM) solves for both external (real) and internal (non-real) resonances of a ...

Shapeshifting enables a wide range of engineering and biomedical applications, but until now transformations have required external triggers. This prerequisite limits viability in closed or inert systems and puts forward the challenge of developing materials with intrinsically encoded shape evolution. Herein we demonstrate programmable shape-memory materials that perform a sequence of encoded a...

Liquid crystals are a class of industrially important materials whose optical properties make them useful particularly in display technology. Optical imaging of these materials provides information about their structure and physical properties. Coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering (CARS) microscopy is used to provide three-dimensional chemical maps of liquid crystalline samples without the use...