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Origami is a promising source of inspiration in designing foldable structures and reconfigurable metamaterials. Here, building on exact folding kinematic conditions, an algorithmic design of rigidly-foldable origami structures is presented, allowing the engineering of metamaterials with arbitrary complex crease patterns.
Combined dimerization and charge ordering are rare to observe in the chemical bonding of a material. Here, a metal-metal phase transition is observed in NaRu2O4, in which site-centered charge ordering coexists with dimerization.
Slide-ring hydrogels possess good mechanical properties but face synthesis challenges. Here, a slide-ring hydrogel is created via photo-initiated polymerization, with its good mechanical and electrical properties allows it to be used as a flexible strain sensor.
Topological data analysis is an important framework for quantifying the structural and morphological features of soft materials. Here, structural heterogeneity is introduced as a quantitative measure of non-equilibrium mesoscopic order in soft matter and used to track the time-evolution of liquid crystal phase transitions.