Related papers: Mechanism-based metamaterials with microstructural…
Knitting turns yarn, a 1D material, into a 2D fabric that is flexible, durable [1], and can be patterned to adopt a wide range of 3D geometries [2]. Like other mechanical metamaterials [3], the elasticity of knitted fabrics is an emergent…
The nonlinear mechanical response of soft materials and slender structures is purposefully harnessed to program functions by design in soft robotic actuators, such as sequencing, amplified response, fast energy release, etc. However,…
The field of rigid origami concerns the folding of stiff, inelastic plates of material along crease lines that act like hinges and form a straight-line planar graph, called the crease pattern of the origami. Crease pattern vertices in the…
Mechanical metamaterials composed of bistable elements have recently emerged as promising platforms for mechanical memory. Traditional approaches to writing information in these systems typically rely on localized actuation or predefined…
By designing tailor-made resonance modes with structured atoms, metamaterials allow us to obtain constitutive parameters outside their limited range from natural or composite materials. Nonetheless, tuning the constitutive parameters relies…
Fully harnessing the vast design space enabled by metamaterials to control electromagnetic (EM) fields remains an open problem for researchers. Inverse-design techniques have shown to best exploit the degrees of freedom available in design,…
Topological mechanical metamaterials are artificial structures whose unusual properties are protected very much like their electronic and optical counterparts. Here, we present an experimental and theoretical study of an active metamaterial…
Architected materials achieve unique mechanical properties through precisely engineered microstructures that minimize material usage. However, a key challenge of low-density materials is balancing high stiffness with stable deformability up…
Materials that are lightweight yet exhibit superior mechanical properties are of compelling importance for several technological applications that range from aircrafts to household appliances. Lightweight materials allow energy saving and…
The ability to change significantly mechanical and wave propagation properties of a structure without rebuilding it has been one of the main challenges in the field of mechanical metamaterials. This stems from the enormous appeal that,…
Machine learning (ML) is emerging as a transformative tool for the design of architected materials, offering properties that far surpass those achievable through lab-based trial-and-error methods. However, a major challenge in current…
The use of origami in engineering has significantly expanded in recent years, spanning deployable structures across scales, folding robotics, and mechanical metamaterials. However, finding foldable paths can be a formidable task as the…
Designing a robot or structure that can fold itself into a target shape is a process that involves challenges originated from multiple sources. For example, the designer of rigid self-folding robots must consider foldability from geometric…
Kirigami-inspired designs can enable self-folding three-dimensional materials from flat, two-dimensional sheets. Hierarchical designs of connected levels increase the diversity of possible target structures, yet they can lead to longer…
We create mechanical metamaterials whose response to uniaxial compression can be programmed by lateral confinement, allowing monotonic, non-monotonic and hysteretic behavior. These functionalities arise from a broken rotational symmetry…
Digital coding metasurfaces have revolutionized electromagnetic (EM) manipulation, yet typical tunable approaches based on active components suffer from the "volatility" bottleneck. While mechanical modulation provides a potential solution,…
Programmable folding of elastic sheets typically relies on predefined flexible creases or active materials-enabled hinges, which lack intrinsic bistability and limit reprogrammability within a single structure. Here, we present a…
Shape morphing magnetic soft materials, composed of magnetic particles in a soft polymer matrix, can transform shapes reversibly, remotely, and rapidly, finding diverse applications in actuators, soft robotics, and biomedical devices. To…
We combine large-scale atomistic modelling with continuum elastic theory to study the shapes of graphene sheets embedding nanoscale kirigami. Lattice segments are selectively removed from a flat graphene sheet and the structure is allowed…
Kirigami are part of the larger class of mechanical metamaterials, which exhibit exotic properties. This article focuses on rhombi-slits, which is a specific type of kirigami. A nonlinear kinematic model was previously proposed as a second…