Thanasis Athanasiou: How does the material yield if you apply a nonlinear shear and how does it recover?
Answer: We elected not to focus on nonlinear shear rheological experiments in the current gel system but instead, focused on performing failure and recovery experiments using tensile testing protocols. However, we have in the past performed an oscillatory amplitude sweep on the gel system with only nanoparticles [see Fig. S4(c) in the supplementary material of [1]]. For that system, we observe softening in the storage modulus and a weak overshoot in the loss modulus. This is reminiscent of the Payne effect, and we may attribute this behavior to the dissociation of the ligands on the nanoparticle (NP) surface.
Ole Hassager: Are the tensile test measurements showing engineering strain?
Answer: Indeed, all measurements in the paper are presented in engineering stresses and strains.
Sina Ghiassinejad: Does the tetra-arm poly(ethylene glycol) (tetraPEG)...
