| Abstract Scope |
Many mechanical deformations, such as buckling, crumpling, wrinkling, and delamination, are usually considered as threats to mechanical integrity and are avoided or reduced in the traditional design of materials and structures. My work goes against these conventions by tailoring such mechanical instabilities to create new functional morphologies. In this talk, I will present our works on controlled deformation and interfacial control of van der Waals materials for flexible and deformable electronics. First, I will introduce our mechanical instability-driven nano-manufacturing approaches to induce controlled deformation of graphene. Furthermore, I will present our work on interfacial control using graphene to modulate fracture modes of thinfilms to enable a new phenomenon of ‘electrical ductility’. These mechanical instability-induced modulations of materials at the atomic level will open the door to new phases of matter with unconventional and reconfigurable properties for applications in next generation deformable electronics. |