Mechanics of Soft Materials Lab

Soft materials are capable of large deformation, and have mechanical properties comparable to those of biological tissues. Recent developments in soft materials are enabling the rise of soft robotics, stretchable electronics, and biomechatronics. These new fields are profoundly altering the interactions between human beings and machines. Through the integration of analytical modeling, computational simulation and experiment, our group aims to investigate the fundamental physics and mechanics of soft materials, such as their constitutive relation, nonlinear deformation, instability, and fracture. On the other hand, our group strives to develop new materials, structures, and functions for soft robotics and stretchable electronics. 

• 6/2023 Congratulate Marwan for passing his preliminary exam!

• 6/2023 Boliang and Shivam presented in SoCal Polymers and Soft Matter Symposium

• 6/2023 Congratulate Yu for receiving the dissertation year fellowship!

• 5/2023 Prof Jin is promoted to associate professor with tenure!

• 5/2023 Prof Jin received the 2023 ASME Sia Nemat-Nasser Early Career Award.

• 4/2023 Congratulate our incoming PhD student, Jonathan Gray, for receiving the Cota-Robles Fellowship!

• 4/2023 Prof Jin delivered an invited talk in 2023 MRS Spring Meeting & Exhibit.

• 4/2023 Prof Jin delivered invited talks at the University of California, Berkeley and Stanford University.

• 2/2023 Prof Jin received the 2023 ACS PMSE Early Investigator Award.

• 12/2022, MSM lab hosted three CEED freshmen to work on a research project of liquid crystal elastomers, under the supervision of Chen. Read more.

• 11/2022 Shivam, Boliang and Yu present their work in 2022 ASME's International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition (IMECE)!

• 11/2022 Prof Jin delivered a guest lecture for middle and high school teachers at Nanoscience Teacher Training Workshop in partnership with CNSI.

• 11/2022 Prof Jin delivered an invited talk at  North Carolina State University.

• 10/2022 Prof Jin delivered invited talks in the Technology Meeting of Society of Engineering Science (SES).

• 'High-throughput printing of combinatorial materials from aerosols' published in Nature

• 'Pseudo-bistability of viscoelastic shells' published Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A

• 'Editorial: Materials, design, modeling and control of soft robotic artificial muscles' published in Frontiers in Robotics and AI 

• 'Highly stretchable metallization based on metal-polymer intermixing for skin-inspired organic transistors' published in Science Advances

• 'Photo-induced spatiotemporal bending of shape memory polymer beams' published in Smart Materials and Structures

• 'Buckling and postbuckling of thick tubes' published in Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids 

• 'Buckling of viscoelastic spherical shells' published in Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids

• 'Matrix stiffness influences tubular formation in renal tissue engineering' published in Applied Sciences

• 'Mechanics underpinning phase separation in hydrogels' published in Macromolecules 

• 'Tough interface-enabled stretchable electronics using non-stretchable polymer semiconductors and conductors' published in Nature Nanotechnology

• 'A hemispherical image sensor array fabricated with organic photo-memory transistors' published in Advanced Materials

• 'Rolling of liquid crystal elastomer bistrips' published in Soft Matter

• 'Harnessing friction in interwoven structures for high-capacity reusable energy-absorbing metamaterials' published in Advanced Science

• 'Spatiotemporally programmable surfaces via viscoelastic shell snapping' published in Advanced Intelligent Systems

• 'Photodriven self-excited hydrogel oscillators' published in Physical Review Applied