Morphology of soft materials, including those of natural systems has great influence in controlling their surface functionalities and responses to external stimuli. Surface morphological features of natural soft systems are produced through controlled cell growth and tissue growth. Artificial systems capable of emulating the morphology-dependent physicochemical responses of natural soft substrates can be prepared through various methods such as surface oxidation, thermal stress, compressive stress, etc. Wrinkling is an important morphological irregularity on soft substrates which can be leveraged in this direction. Wrinkling in artificial soft systems can be achieved through several experimental strategies such as compressive stress, thermal stress, surface oxidation, etc. The tunable, reversible and responsive nature of wrinkled soft substrates make them a potential tool for numerous applications in electronics, optics, adhesives, etc. In this review, have briefly summarized and commented on recent developments in different types of wrinkled soft substrates, their preparation, and emergent applications.
Functionality and stimuli-response of natural and artificial elastomeric materials depend significantly on the morphology of their surfaces. Structural transformability and tunable responsiveness of wrinkles on elastomeric materials can enable numerous applications in flexible electronics, optics, and adhesives. Currently existing fabrication techniques rely on sophisticated instrumentation, complex experimental setups, and expensive reagents. These methods are limited in terms of mechanical robustness of the wrinkles produced. Here, a simple, inexpensive, scalable, and reproducible strategy, making use of buckling instability for the creation of soft surface wrinkles on polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), is presented. PDMS with lower elastic modulus is spin-coated onto a mechanically stretched film of PDMS with a higher elastic modulus. Thermal curing followed by the release of prestrain resulted in the formation of wrinkles in the top layer of the PDMS. The hydrophobic soft surface wrinkles with compositional homogeneity exhibit efficient fog water collection and triboelectric charge generation useful for the preparation of triboelectric nanogenerator devices. Furthermore, the substrates show high mechanical stability and mechanoresponsive optical behaviors. The simplicity and general applicability of the method presented here is expected to establish a promising pathway toward the formation of soft wrinkles in other elastomeric systems also, facilitating important applications in various fields.
We have developed a simple and effective method to prepare stable wettability gradients on an elastomeric soft substrate, polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). In our method, a partially cured PDMS film composed of...
Properties, behaviors, and applications of soft materials depend decisively on the characteristics of their surfaces. Physical features and chemical functionality of the soft surfaces control their interactions with the surroundings thereby deciding their responses to various physical and chemical phenomena. A gradient of such surface features i.e, a gradual change in a chemical or physical characteristic across a surface will result in a gradual change in the response of the surface to its surroundings in the same direction. Chemical as well as physical (morphological) gradients on soft surface enable useful properties pertinent to a variety of fields such as microfluidics, surface coatings, sensing, optics, and biology. Numerous methods have been used for the preparation of chemical as well as morphological gradients. Practical applications of soft surface gradients require stable large-scale surfaces with precisely controlled directionality and resolution of the gradients. Wettability gradients are one of the prominent classes of gradients created on soft surfaces. These gradients are constituted by gradual increase or decrease of hydrophobicity/hydrophilicity across a surface. One-dimensional (1D) as well as two-dimensional (2D) wettability gradients are fabricated with different patterns. This short review will summarize the advancements in the preparation, properties, and applications of wettability gradients on soft surfaces. Qualitative description of the fabrication processes, properties, and practical applications of the gradients are included along with our comments about the future prospects of these systems.
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