Field Responsive Metamaterials

We developed several field-responsive metamaterials that can convert the input from an external field, such as temperature variation, into a functional response. These metamaterials find application in a variety of sectors including deployable aerospace structures, biomedical devices, flexible electronics, and untethered soft robots. 

Some truss architectures we introduced in our group can morph on target in response to changes in environmental temperature while offering load-bearing capacity. Other kirigami architectures can feature the shape memory effect, i.e., they can preserve temporary shapes without external constraints and revert to their permanent shape upon exposure to an external stimulus, such as heat, light, or moisture. While most thermally triggered reconfigurable metamaterials using shape memory polymers require a laborious process of thermomechanical programming at high temperature, our metamaterials use 3D-printable polymeric materials that do not rely upon their shape memory effect to generate robust shape memory. The samples below exhibit reversible snap-through instability in a bi-material framework that is exclusively driven by environmental temperature. The need for mechanical intervention is bypassed by leveraging the thermally induced contact and mismatched thermal expansion of the constituent materials.

Some Related Publications

Yang H, Wang WJ, Wyman O, Zhai W, Ma L Pasini D, Temperature-Responsive Multistable Kirigami with Reprogrammable Multi-Shape Memory, Materials Today, 2025.  

Yang H, Wang WJ, Zhu JZ, Ma L, Pasini D, Zhai W, Temperature-Driven Topological Transformations in Prestressed Cellular Metamaterials, Advanced Functional Materials, 2024.

Ma R, Wu L, Pasini D, Contact-driven snapping in thermally actuated metamaterials for fully reversible functionality, Advanced Functional Materials, Vol 33, 2213371, 2023. (PDF)

Yang H,  D'Ambrosio N, Pasini D, Shape memory mechanical metamaterials, Materials Today, Vol 66, Pages 36-49, 2023. (PDF)

Ma R, Liu L, Wyman O, Pasini D, Programming polymorphable yet stiff truss metamaterials in response to temperature, Applied Materials Today, Vol 2, 101432, 2022. (PDF)