Drops: A bio-inspired tool to structure materials

Nature uses drops to build soft materials possessing well-defined structures and locally varying compositions and therefore display exceptional mechanical properties. Inspired by nature, we use emulsion drops as building blocks of macroscopic granular hydrogels with well-defined micrometer-scale structures and locally varying compositions. I will demonstrate the influence of the micrometer-scale structure of these granular hydrogels on their mechanical properties. To render hydrogels responsive and adaptive, we employ selectively permeable capsules fabricated from water-oil-water double emulsions as building blocks. In addition, we use amorphous inorganic biominerals, such as CaCO3, as reagents that can locally change the mechanical properties of these materials.