Mechanical Self-Assembly of a Strain-Engineered Flexible Layer: Wrinkling, Rolling, and Twisting

Abstract

An elastic sheet can be made to bend, twist, buckle, or wrinkle into a preprogrammed shape by employing a judicious distribution of differential strains. The authors review the mechanics behind such self-assembly, examples from nature, and state-of-the-art fabrication techniques. Engineering based on these phenomena has great potential across applications ranging from stretchable electronics and microactuators to drug delivery and self-assembled biological implants.