It is widely appreciated that surface tension can dominate the behavior of liquids at small
scales. Solids also have surface stresses of a similar magnitude, but they are usually …

Although negligible at large scales, capillary forces may become dominant for submillimetric
objects. Surface tension is usually associated with the spherical shape of small droplets and …

The laws of wetting are well known for drops on rigid surfaces but change dramatically when
the substrate is soft and deformable. The combination of wetting and the intricacies of soft …

From bone and wood to concrete and carbon fibre, composites are ubiquitous natural and
synthetic materials. Eshelby's inclusion theory describes how macroscopic stress fields …

Droplets deform soft substrates near their contact lines. Using confocal microscopy, we
measure the deformation of silicone gel substrates due to glycerol and fluorinated-oil …

Abstract The Johnson–Kendall–Roberts theory is the basis of modern contact mechanics. It
describes how two deformable objects adhere together, driven by adhesion energy and …

Young's law fails on soft solid and liquid substrates where there are substantial deformations
near the contact line. On liquid substrates, this is captured by Neumann's classic analysis …

Numerous cell types have shown a remarkable ability to detect and move along gradients in
stiffness of an underlying substrate—a process known as durotaxis. The mechanisms …

Liquid drops on soft solids generate strong deformations below the contact line, resulting
from a balance of capillary and elastic forces. The movement of these drops may cause …

The contact angle that a liquid drop makes on a soft substrate does not obey the classical
Young's relation, since the solid is deformed elastically by the action of the capillary forces …