#metamaterial

#metamaterial

Producing Dynamic Metamaterials Through The Use of Kirigami TechniquesMetamaterials are materials made to possess a quality not found in naturally occurring materials. These materials could be used in various fields such as in optics, medicine, aerospace engineering, as well as earthquake engineering, to name a few.Kirigami is a variation of origami. It is similar to origami in that it involves folding paper. However, what makes it different is it involves cutting paper to create sculptures. Recently, scientists found out that this art could help in producing complex and dynamic metamaterials.Learn more about this exciting study over at NC State University.(Image Credit: Jie Yin via YouTube)#Metamaterial #Kirigami #Origami

'Mirror Fabric' Cools Wearer by 5°CNow this is a (literally) cool shirt!Chinese engineers Ma Yaoguang of Zhejiang University and Tao Guangming of Huazhong University of Science and Technology created a new metamaterial fabric that cools the wearer by 5°C.The new metafabric, made of polylactic acid and synthetic fiber blend with titanium dioxide nanoparticles scattered throughout - used chemical bonds to absorb body heat and re-emit its energy into space as mid-infrared radiation. The nanoparticles also reflect UV, visible, and near-infrared spectrum, further cooling the wearer. While the fabric can be made into a regular shirt, "optically, it's a mirror," said Tao.#shirt #cooling #fabric #metafabric #metamaterial #titaniumdioxide #nanoparticle #infrared #mirror

New 3D Tensegrity Metamaterial is Ultra Lightweight and Crush-ResistantCatastrophic collapse of materials usually involves a chain reaction of small, localized damages or deformities - think of a crack in the windshield of a car that started with a small chip in the glass.But what if you could avoid local deformity?Engineers at University of California, Irvine and the Georgia Institute of Technology have created a new metamaterial using tensegrity to avoid localized deformities to prevent failure.They start with direct laser writing technique to generate elementary cells sized about 10 to 20 micron. These were built into 8-unit supercells that are assembled with others to make a continuous structure. Upon testing, the new metamaterial feature 25-fold improvement in deformability and orders-of-magnitude increase in energy absorption.

Scientists Can Grow Super Strong 'Metallic Wood'After three years of trying, the engineers at the University of Pennsylvania's School of Engineering and Applied Science have succeeded in creating a new type of material they've dubbed 'metallic wood.'The new material, a lattice of nanoscale nickel struts, has high strength-to-density ratio akin to wood from trees which are strong enough to grow hundreds of feet tall but light enough to float on water.In the image above, a strip of metallic wood about 1 inch long and one-third inch wide (2.5 cm by 0.8 cm) is thinner than household aluminum foil but is capable of supporting 50 times its own weight without buckling. If the weight was suspended from it, the same strip could support more than 6 lb (2.7 lg) without breaking.The key to the metallic wood's success is the precise spacing of the nanolattic and avoiding cracks when the material is being manufactured."Our new manufacturing approach allows us to make porous metals that are three times stronger than previous porous metals at similar relative density and 1,000 times larger than other nanolattices," said professor James Pikul. "We plan to use these materials to make a number of previously impossible devices, which we are already using as membranes to separate biomaterials in cancer diagnostics, protective coatings, and flexible sensors."