Origami-Inspired Metamaterials and Metastructures

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Background

Metamaterials and metasurfaces are artificial structures exhibiting various exotic properties that are rare in nature, which can provide a variety of appealing solutions for engineering problems, such as surfaces with changeable scattering and absorbing properties. One main advantage of such materials is the designable and reconfigurable properties associated with electromagnetic, optical, acoustic, thermal, and mechanical performances. These reconfigurable properties are facilitated through active material and/or geometric variations. The primary method to achieve geometric change is through translational and/or rotational deformation, while the latter provides higher nonlinearity, which happens to be the fundamental working principle of origami, i.e., folding of thin materials. Traditional origami can fold two-dimensional materials into complex three-dimensional ones, while origami-inspired designs extend the concept to bending-dominating objects which are most common in largely deformable materials containing thin components.

One fundamental problem is the lack of a systematic design approach to practically achieve arbitrarily prescribed geometric reconfiguration. Designs based on high degree-of-freedom(DOF) platforms can achieve almost arbitrary reconfiguration but struggle with actuation and control. Pneumatic control, smart materials with shape memory or magnetic properties, and structural multi-stability have been applied to alleviate the problem, but the resultant accuracy and achievable configurations are limited. Designs based on low DOF platforms can be actuated easily but can only deform in a simple way. A robust design framework that can achieve inverse designability, easy actuation, and high accuracy is yet to be established, which limits the generality and practicality of this concept. Moreover, research work that functionally integrates multi-physics, origami-inspired designs, advanced manufacturing, and experimental validation to show versatile tunability and practical merit need to be delivered.

The topics in this Research Topic include but are not limited to the following:
• Novel design theories for arbitrarily prescribed geometric reconfiguration based on origami and kirigami.
• Novel design and applications of origami- and/or kirigami-enabled topological mechanical metamaterials with intriguing topological phase transition properties.
• Novel origami- and/or kirigami-enabled metasurfaces for electromagnetic wave modulation.
• Micro-nano origami and/or kirigami structures with tunable physical properties such as variable electromagnetic, acoustic, and optical performances.
• Origami- and kirigami-enabled flexible electronics with multi-field coupling.
• Large-scale applications of origami structures such as reconfigurable platforms for adaptive antennas.
• Novel manufacturing technology for multi-scales and multi-functional origami metamaterials and metasurfaces.
• Experimental techniques to characterize the physical properties of origami metamaterials and metasurfaces.

Keywords: origami, kirigami, metamaterials, metastructures, metasurfaces

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