Recently, doctors from BEBC, Dr. Moxiao Li, Qingzhen Yang, Hao Liu, Mushu Qiu and Prof. Feng Xu, Tian Jian Lu published a paper on SMALL. The paper was entitled "Capillary Origami Inspired Fabrication of Complex 3D Hydrogel Constructs".

Inspired by the capillary origami phenomenon where surface tension of a droplet on an elastic membrane can induce spontaneous folding of the membrane into 3D structures along with droplet evaporation, they established a facile strategy for the fabrication of complex 3D hydrogel constructs with programmable shapes and sizes by crosslinking hydrogels during the folding process. They further proposed a mathematical model to predict the temporal structure evolution of the folded 3D hydrogel constructs. Using this model, They achieved precise control over the 3D shapes (e.g., pyramid, pentahedron and cube) and sizes (ranging from hundreds of micrometers to millimeters) through tuning membrane shape, dimensionless parameter of the process (Elastocapillary number C_e) and evaporation time. This work would be favorable to multiple areas, such as flexible electronics, tissue regeneration and drug delivery.