Event

Particulate materials, or granular materials, are collections of discrete solid particles ranging from nano- to macroscopic sizes. They are usually disordered, and are known to exhibit interesting emergent behavior such as the jamming/unjamming transition. In this talk, I will present how to control the macroscale behavior of granular assemblies by designing the microscale particle properties. In the first part, I will introduce an ultrathin free-standing membrane self-assembled from nanocrystalline colloids. This nanometer-thick membrane could actively respond its mechanical properties to external stimuli and bend into 3D structures. In the second part, I will discuss active phononic materials from particle assemblies. The particle interactions are spatio-temporally modulated in these materials, leading to novel wave transmission phenomena.  In the end, I will present how novel non-convex particle geometries affect their jamming transition, which leads to adaptive and reconfigurable structures. These works open routes towards smart and functional materials from granular particles at different length scales.