I'm attaching slides of a talk that I gave yesterday at the Schlumberger-Doll Research Center.  In preparing the talk, I made liberal use of slides prepared by Wei Hong for his own presentations.  The talk is mainly based on the following papers:

• Wei Hong, Xuanhe Zhao, Jinxiong Zhou and Zhigang Suo, A theory of coupled diffusion and large deformation in polymeric gels. Journal of Mechanics and Physics of Solids, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jmps.2007.11.010
• Xuanhe Zhao, Wei Hong, and Zhigang Suo, Inhomogeneous and anisotropic equilibrium state of a swollen hydrogel containing a hard core. Applied Physics Letters 92, 051904 (2008).
• Wei Hong, Xuanhe Zhao, Zhigang Suo, Drying-induced bifurcation in a hydrogel-actuated nanostructure.

I'm grateful to Nathan Wicks for the invitation to speak, and for pointing to the recent development of swelling elastomers in the oil industry.  Many in the audience gave excellent feedback.

Attached please find the slides in both pdf and ppt format.  Please feel free to use them any way you like.