Research Summary
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My research focus is highly multi-disciplinary which lies at the crossroad between Mechanics, Soft Materials, Robotics, and Bioengineering. Not surprisingly, my research contributions present across a wide range of fields.
At the intersections of these four fields, I propose and develop extremely tough bonding of hydrogels on diverse solids and their applications, which results in several first authored papers including Nature Materials (2016), Advanced Materials (2016), Nature Communications (2016), Nature Communications (2017), and PNAS (2017). Recently, I also explore 3D printing of soft materials, which lead me toward the study on mechanics of direct ink writing 3D printing, the development of 3D printing of living responsive devices, and the my invention of ferromagnetic 3D printing. This new venture results in several first authored papers including Advanced Materials (2017), Advanced Materials (2017), and Nature (2018). |
Research Interests
Note: Related first authored papers are referred with links
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Soft Active Materials and RobotsSoft and flexible motions of various creatures in nature provide great inspiration for unconventional soft and flexible machines and robots. I have proposed and studied diverse kinds of soft active materials and robots including shape memory alloy based robot (Bioinspiration & Biomimetics, 2011), transparent hydraulic hydrogel robots (Nature Communications, 2017), and magnetically actuated soft materials with programmed ferromagnetic domains (Nature, 2018).
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Mechanics and Engineering of HydrogelsHydrogels are charming materials for a wide range of applications and investigations due to their unique properties. Furthermore, their unique similarities to biological tissues provide a rich opportunity as potential human-machine interface materials. I have proposed and studied diverse mechanics and engineering of hydrogels including tough hydrogels and their robust integration to diverse materials (Nature Materials, 2016; Nature Communications, 2017) and tissues (TBD). Recently, I also further expand my study into hydrogel bioelectronics (Chemical Society Reviews, 2018) including pure PEDOT:PSS hydrogels (Nature Communications, 2019) and their robust integration with diverse materials (TBD).
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Applications of Soft MaterialsSoft materials such as hydrogels and elastomers have unique advantages over convention engineering materials. Recently, advanced soft materials have been adopted across wide range of applications from wearable devices to biomedical implants. I have proposed and studied diverse applications of a wide range of soft materials including hydrogel-based stretchable devices (Advanced Materials, 2016), hydrogel-elastomer hybrids hosting engineered cells (PNAS, 2017), and hydrogel-based multifunctional composite neural probes (TBD).
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3D Printing of Soft Materials3D printing is a versatile fabrication tactic for a wide range of soft materials. 3D printing of soft materials has growing importance and interesting research perspectives including materials, mechanics, and applications. I have proposed and studied a diverse aspects of 3D soft materials printing including mechanics of 3D printing (Advanced Materials, 2017), 3D printing of living responsive devices (Advanced Materials, 2017), and ferromagnetic 3D printing of programmable soft active materials (Nature, 2018).
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