Jianliang Xiao's blog

Graphene edges, analogous to the structure of nanotubes, can significantly influence the overall electronic and magnetic properties of graphene nanostructures, and thus have become important issues in graphene research, especially for electronic applications. In this recent paper published on PRL, we reported that the free folding of suspended graphene sheets by random mechanical stimulation has preferred folding directions.

A review paper on stretchable electronics written by Professors John A. Rogers, Takao Someya, and Yonggang Huang was published in a recent issue of Science . This paper gives a nice summary on the recent advances in inorganic and organic stretchable electronics. Materials, structures and mechanics of these systems are discussed. Many attractive applications of stretchable electronics are introduced, such as stretchable silicon circuit, electronic eyeball camera, and flexible LED display. 

In this paper recently feature on the cover of Science Translational Medicine, we report the development of a class of mechanically flexible silicon electronics for multiplexed measurement of signals in an intimate, conformal integrated mode on the dynamic, three-dimensional surfaces of soft tissues in the human body. Mechanics model shows that the strain in the fragile materials, e.g.

In this recently published paper on Nanotechnology, we studied the in-surface buckling mechanics of one dimensional nanomaterials on elastomeric substrates.  Simple analytical solutions are obtained for buckling wavelength and amplitude, which can be easily applied to the in-surface buckling of different nanomaterials, such as nanowires and nanotubes.  It is shown that in-surface buckling of nanomaterials has lower energy than out-of-surface buckling, which explains the experimental observance o

Single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) possess extraordinary electrical and mechanical properties, with many possible applications in electronics and materials science. Dense, horizonally aligned arrays of linearly configured SWNTs represent perhaps the most attractive and scalable way to implement this class of nanomaterial in practical systems. Recent work shows that templated growth of tubes on certain crystalline substrates (e.g. quartz) yields arrays with the necessary levels of perfection, as demonstrated by the formation of devices and full systems on quartz.

Buckling of thin layers or aligned arrays of stiff materials on elastomeric substrates has many important applications, such as stretchable electronics, precision metrology and flexible optoelectronics.  These systems show one common phenomenon, the stiff thin layers buckle normal to the substrate surface (out-of-surface buckling).  By contrast, we recently reported for the first time that silicon nanowires (SiNWs) on elastomeric substrates buckle only within the substrate surface, i.e. in-surface buckling.  Experimental process to obtain buckled SiNWs is described.

Solid mechanician and Caltech Faculty Member Named to American Academy of Arts and Sciences: Caltech professor Ares Rosakis, is among the 210 new fellows elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences this year. They join an assembly that was founded in 1780 by John Adams, James Bowdoin, John Hancock, and other scholars to provide practical solutions to pressing issues.

We have studied the scaling of controlled nonlinear buckling processes in materials with dimensions in the molecular range (i.e., ～1 nm) through experimental and theoretical studies of buckling in individual single-wall carbon nanotubes on substrates of poly(dimethylsiloxane). The results show not only the ability to create and manipulate patterns of buckling at these molecular scales, but also, that analytical continuum mechanics theory can explain, quantitatively, all measurable aspects of this system.