Complex pathways and memory in compressed corrugated sheets

The nonlinear response of driven complex materials—disordered magnets, amorphous media, and crumpled sheets—features intricate transition pathways where the system repeatedly hops between metastable states. Such pathways encode memory effects and may allow information processing, yet tools are lacking to experimentally observe and control these pathways, and their full breadth has not been explored. Here we introduce compression of corrugated elastic sheets to precisely observe and manipulate their full, multistep pathways, which are reproducible, robust, and controlled by geometry. We show how manipulation of the boundaries allows us to elicit multiple targeted pathways from a single sample. In all cases, each state in the pathway can be encoded by the binary state of material bits called hysterons, and the strength of their interactions plays a crucial role. In particular, as function of increasing interaction strength, we observe Preisach pathways, expected in systems of independently switching hysterons; scrambled pathways that evidence hitherto unexplored interactions between these material bits; and accumulator pathways which leverage these interactions to perform an elementary computation. Our work opens a route to probe, manipulate, and understand complex pathways, impacting future applications in soft robotics and information processing in materials.

Enabling random lasing in an ultrabroad spectral range with robust platforms based on amorphous media

An amorphous medium is proposed to serve as the base of alternative strongly scattering centers for random lasing.

PPM Detection Limits in PXRD by Integrating Nonlinear Optics and Synchrotron XRD

SHG microscopy allows rapid and selective identification of trace chiral crystals within amorphous media, enabling targeted XRD using a 5-10 micrometer diameter "minibeam". The sensitivity of PXRD is increased substantially by reducing the background scattering contributions of amorphous material otherwise encountered with a larger beam. In addition, performing diffraction only at the locations most likely to produce diffraction greatly reduced the overall beam-time required to perform the PXRD analyses. Integration of the SHG microscope directly into a synchrotron X-ray beamline at Argonne National Laboratory recovered high spatial registry between the regions of interest identified by SHG for positioning within the X-ray beam. Using this approach, diffraction was performed on individual griseofulvin nanocrystals suspended within an amorphous polymer, corresponding to a total of ~20 fg of total crystalline material. Additional measurements for ritonavir in hydroxypropylmethylcellulose (HPMC) were also performed, in which a bulk API concentration of 100 ppm produced diffraction peaks with a signal to noise ratio of >3000. Among other applications, sensitive detection of trace crystallinity can inform the design of amorphous formulations, in which the bioavailability of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) is enhanced by maintaining them in an amorphous state. However, the long-term stability of a final dosage form can be negatively impacted by spontaneous transitioning to the typically more stable crystalline forms of the APIs, such that extensive quantitative characterization of the crystallization behaviors of amorphous formulations is routinely performed.