Although strong and stiff human-made composites have long been developed, the microstructure of today's most advanced has yet to achieve order sophisticated hierarchy hybrid materials built up by living organisms in nature. Clay-based nanocomposites with layered structure can reach notable stiffness strength, but these properties are usually not accompanied ductility flaw tolerance found structures generated natural materials. By using principles composites, we showed that films combining...

Abstract 3D printing has become commonplace for the manufacturing of objects with unusual geometries. Recent developments that enabled multiple materials indicate technology can potentially offer a much wider design space beyond shaping. Here we show new dimension in this be exploited through control orientation anisotropic particles used as building blocks during direct ink-writing process. Particle is demonstrated by applying low magnetic fields on deposited inks pre-loaded magnetized...

The orientation and distribution of reinforcing particles in artificial composites are key to enable effective reinforcement the material mechanically loaded directions, but remain poor if compared distinctive architectures present natural structural such as teeth, bone, seashells. We show that micrometer-sized coated with minimal concentrations superparamagnetic nanoparticles (0.01 1 volume percent) can be controlled by using ultralow magnetic fields (1 10 milliteslas) produce synthetic...

Pump up the volume: Wet foams prepared with surfactants are thermodynamically unstable systems that undergo rapid disproportionation, drainage, and coalescence. Ultrastable have now been using colloidal particles as stabilizers (left picture). The stabilization results from irreversible adsorption at air–water interface of surface-modified short-chain amphiphiles (right Supporting information for this article is available on WWW under...

3D printing of renewable building blocks like cellulose nanocrystals offers an attractive pathway for fabricating sustainable structures. Here, viscoelastic inks composed anisotropic (CNC) that enable patterning objects by direct ink writing are designed and formulated. These concentrated CNC particles suspended in either water or a photopolymerizable monomer solution. The shear‐induced alignment these during is quantified atomic force microscopy, polarized light 2D wide‐angle X‐ray...

Bulk hierarchical porous ceramics with unprecedented strength-to-weight ratio and tunable pore sizes across three different length scales are printed by direct ink writing. Such an extrusion-based process relies on the formulation of inks in form particle-stabilized emulsions foams that sufficiently stable to resist coalescence during printing.

Abstract Soft actuation allows robots to interact safely with humans, other machines, and their surroundings. Full exploitation of the potential soft actuators has, however, been hindered by lack simple manufacturing routes generate multimaterial parts intricate shapes architectures. Here, we report a 3D printing platform for seamless digital fabrication pneumatic silicone exhibiting programmable bioinspired architectures motions. The comprise an elastomeric body whose surface is decorated...

Abstract Biological composites have evolved elaborate hierarchical structures to achieve outstanding mechanical properties using weak but readily available building blocks. Combining the underlying design principles of such biological materials with rich chemistry accessible in synthetic systems may enable creation artificial unprecedented and functionalities. This bioinspired approach requires identification, understanding, quantification natural their replication materials, taking into...

3D printing of bacteria-laden hydrogels enables the digital fabrication complex functional materials.

Wet foams are used in many important technologies either as end or intermediate products. However, the thermodynamic instability of wet leads to undesired bubble coarsening over time. Foam stability can be drastically improved by using particles instead surfactants foam stabilizers, since tend adsorb irreversibly at air-water interface. Recently, we presented a novel method for preparation high-volume particle-stabilized which show neither growth nor drainage more than 4 days. The is based...

More than just simple folding Origami involves two-dimensional sheets into complex three-dimensional objects. However, some shapes cannot be created using standard folds. Faber et al. studied the wing of an earwig, which can fold in ways not possible origami and alter its shape for flight. The authors replicated this ability by a membrane that allows deformations variable stiffness. Prestretching generated energetically bistable patterns exhibited passive self-folding behavior. Science ,...

The alignment of anisotropic particles during ink deposition directly affects the microstructure and properties materials manufactured by extrusion-based 3D printing. Although particle in diluted suspensions is well described analytical numerical models, dynamics orientation highly concentrated inks typically used for printing via direct writing (DIW) remains poorly understood. Using cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) as model building blocks increasing technological relevance, we study under...

Abstract Mechanical gradients are useful to reduce strain mismatches in heterogeneous materials and thus prevent premature failure of devices a wide range applications. While complex graded designs hallmark biological materials, manmade often limited 1D profiles due the lack adequate fabrication tools. Here, multimaterial 3D‐printing platform is developed fabricate elastomer spanning three orders magnitude elastic modulus used investigate role various bioinspired gradient on local global...

We present a novel direct‐foaming method to produce macroporous ceramics using particles instead of surfactants as stabilizers the wet foams. This allows for fabrication ultra‐stable foams that resist coarsening upon drying and sintering. Macroporous various chemical compositions with open or closed cells, average cell sizes ranging from 10 300 μm porosities within 45% 95%, can be easily prepared this new approach. The sintered show high compressive strengths up 16 MPa in alumina 88%.

The stabilization of nanoparticles in concentrated aqueous suspensions is required many manufacturing technologies and industrial products. Nanoparticles are commonly stabilized through the adsorption a dispersant layer around particle surface. formation (adlayer) appropriate thickness crucial for containing high nanoparticle concentrations. Thick adlayers result an excessive excluded volume particles, whereas thin lead to agglomeration. Both effects reduce maximum concentration suspension....

We describe new developments for controlled fabrication of monodisperse non-spherical particles using droplet microfluidics. The high degree control afforded by microfluidic technologies enables generation single and multiple emulsion droplets. show that these droplets can be transformed to through further simple, spontaneous processing steps, including arrested coalescence, asymmetric polymer solidification, polymerization in flow, evaporation-driven clustering. These versatile scalable...