Research coverage in media
Our research interests are centred around applying principles of solid mechanics and dynamics to a wide range of interdisciplinary engineering problems. We are interested in fundamental and applied research. Some of our research highlighted in media is given below.
Lattice Model of Graphene
Our work applying lattice mechanics principles to model the mechanics of a single layer Graphene is highlighted by Nanotechnology journal as one of the important articles published in 2009 in that journal.
Soft Materials with Memory
Featured in UBC reports here is the story of a novel soft material system in which surface modfication at nanoscale has macroscopic consequences in the form of shape memory effect.
Intrigued by the experimental observations on polymerbrush coatings developed by Jayachandran Kizhakkedathu's research group at The Centre for Blood Research (CBR) we developed experiments and mechanics models for soft materials exhbiting shape memory effect. This interdisciplinary collaborative work has appeared in Angewandte Chemie here 
. This work has shown that by grafting polymer brushes onto the surface of a soft material large, reversible, mechanical deformations can be obtained. The underlying mechano-chemistry has important applications in the development of soft actuators, sensors, and soft delopyable structures. In the picture above you see deformation of a soft pPVC specimen. The beam completely recovers its original shape once the stimulus (change in humidity in this case) is removed. By changing the chemistry of the brush we have shown response to other stimulii such as temperature and pH. An attractive feature of this new material system is that only surface modification is needed (as opposed to bulk propetry changes in hydrogels or shape memory alloys) which makes the design process modular. We can impart the memory characterisitcs by altering the surface of an existing device.
Dr. Yuquan Zou (CBR); Donald E Brooks (CBR, Department of Chemistry); and Adriel Lam (Department of Mechanical Engineering) are the key researchers involved in this work.
Some illustrative videos are given below.
- Bending Sample:
- Control Sample:
- Beam Sample:
- Comparison with other actuators:
A comparison among different actuators is provided by the following Ashby chart. Comparing with shape memory metals, it can be seen that the polymer brush actuators give higher strain for comparable force per unit length of the coating. Strong potential exist for sensing applications too.
