Experimental study on the microstructure and nanomechanicai properties of the wing membrane of dragonfly

Detailed investigations on the microstructure and the mechanical properties of the wing membrane of the dragonfly are carried out. It is found that in the direction of the thickness the membrane was divided into three layers rather than a single entity as traditionally considered, and on the surfaces the membrane displays a random distribution rough microstructure that is composed of numerous nanometer scale columns coated by the cuticle wax secreted. The characteristics of the surface structure are measured and described. The mechanical properties of the membranes taken separately from the wings of live and dead dragonflies are investigated by the nanoindentation technique. The Young＇s moduli obtained here are approximately two times greater than the previous result, and the reasons that yield the difference are discussed.

Recent progress of morphable 3D mesostructures in advanced materials

Soft robots complement the existing efforts of miniaturizing conventional,rigid robots,and have the potential to revolutionize areas such as military equipment and biomedical devices.This type of system can accomplish tasks in complex and time-varying environments through geometric reconfiguration induced by diverse external stimuli,such as heat,solvent,light,electric field,magnetic field,and mechanical field.Approaches to achieve reconfigurable mesostructures are essential to the design and fabrication of soft robots.Existing studies mainly focus on four key aspects:reconfiguration mechanisms,fabrication schemes,deformation control principles,and practical applications.This review presents a detailed survey of methodologies for morphable mesostructures triggered by a wide range of stimuli,with a number of impressive examples,demonstrating high degrees of deformation complexities and varied multi-functionalities.The latest progress based on the development of new materials and unique design concepts is highlighted.An outlook on the remaining challenges and open opportunities is provided.

Design strategy of porous elastomer substrate and encapsulation forinorganic stretchableelectronics

The emergence of stretchable electronic technology has led to the development of many industries and facilitated many unprecedented applications,owing to its ability to bear var-ious deformations.However,conventional solid elastomer sub-strates and encapsulation can severely restrict the free motion and deformation of patterned interconnects,leading to poten-tial mechanical failures and electrical breakdowns.To address this issue,we propose a design strategy of porous elastomer substrate and encapsulation to improve the stretchability of serpentine interconnects in island-bridge structures.The ser-pentine interconnects are fully bonded to the elastomer sub-strate,while segments above circular pores remain suspended,allowing for free deformation and a substantial improvement in elastic stretchability compared to the solid substrates.The pores ensure unimpeded interconnect deformations,and mod-erate porosity provides support while maintaining the initial planar state.Compared to conventional solid configurations,finite element analysis(FEA)demonstrates a substantial enhancement of elastic stretchability(e.g.=9 times without encapsulation and=7 times with encapsulation).Uniaxial cyc-lic loading fatigue experiments validate the enhanced elastic stretchability,indicating the mechanical stability of the porous design.With its intrinsic advantages in permeability,the pro-posed strategy has the potential to offer insightful inspiration and novel concepts for advancing the field of stretchable inorganic electronics.

Parallel Bounded Search for the Maximum Clique Problem

Given an undirected graph,the Maximum Clique Problem(MCP)is to find a largest complete subgraph of the graph.MCP is NP-hard and has found many practical applications.In this paper,we propose a parallel Branch-and-Bound(BnB)algorithm to tackle this NP-hard problem,which carries out multiple bounded searches in parallel.Each search has its upper bound and shares a lower bound with the rest of the searches.The potential benefit of the proposed approach is that an active search terminates as soon as the best lower bound found so far reaches or exceeds its upper bound.We describe the implementation of our highly scalable and efficient parallel MCP algorithm,called PBS,which is based on a state-of-the-art sequential MCP algorithm.The proposed algorithm PBS is evaluated on hard DIMACS and BHOSLIB instances.The results show that PBS achieves a near-linear speedup on most DIMACS instances and a superlinear speedup on most BHOSLIB instances.Finally,we give a detailed analysis that explains the good speedups achieved for the tested instances.