Person:
Crosby, Al

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Job Title
Professor, Department of Polymer Science and Engineering
Last Name
Crosby
First Name
Al
Discipline
Nanoscience and Nanotechnology
Expertise
Biomimetic materials design
Combinatorial methods
Deformation and fracture of thin films
Elastic instabilities
Mechanics of hierarchical structures
Nanocomposites
Polymer adhesion
Polymer patterning
Responsive surfaces and materials
Introduction
My research group in the Polymer Science & Engineering Department focuses on developing fundamental knowledge of hierarchical soft materials and demonstrating new design principles to scale advanced materials for technology. An overarching goal is to understand materials behaviors at the nanometer to micron size scales and to filter this understanding into simple, creative concepts and forms that can have impact at human scales. From the gecko to the Venus flytrap, our group uses beautiful examples of hierarchical design and fabrication found in nature to inspire the development and understanding of hierarchical structures that display predictable materials properties.
I organize my research along four themes:

• Bio-inspired Adhesion
• Polymer Surface Instabilities
• Polymer-Nanoparticle Assemblies
• Properties of Gels and Living Tissue

The impact of our research group’s accomplishments is strong and broad. Our work has resulted in more than 80 peer-reviewed manuscripts, several book chapters, and numerous patents. In addition to many national and international awards and honors, our findings have been much featured in the popular media, perhaps most notably, in regard to the creation of gecko-inspired adhesives called Geckskin™; this development has been featured on the Discovery, NPR, CNET, BBC, Popular Science, and other venues, and CNN Money-Fortune Magazine picked Geckskin™ as one of the top 5 science breakthroughs of 2012.
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    Publication
    Source Data for Self-Spinning Filaments for Autonomously Linked Microfibers
    (2022-01-01) Barber, Dylan M; Emrick, Todd S.; Grason, Gregory; Crosby, Alfred
    Filamentous bundles are ubiquitous in Nature, achieving highly adaptive functions and structural integrity from assembly of diverse mesoscale supramolecular elements. Engineering routes to synthetic, topologically integrated analogs demands precisely coordinated control of multiple filaments’ shapes and positions, a major challenge when performed without complex machinery or labor-intensive processing. Here, we demonstrate a photocreasing design that encodes local curvature and twist into mesoscale polymer filaments, enabling their programmed transformation into target 3-dimensional geometries. Importantly, patterned photocreasing of filament arrays drives autonomous spinning to form linked filament bundles that are highly entangled and structurally robust. In individual filaments, photocreases unlock paths 16 to arbitrary, 3-dimensional curves in space. Collectively, photocrease-mediated bundling establishes a transformative paradigm enabling smart, self-assembled mesostructures that mimic performance-differentiating structures in Nature (e.g., tendon and muscle fiber) and the macro-engineered world (e.g., rope).