Diamondoid structural meta materials
Materials for objects of everyday use are one of the first if not the first target for APM systems.
Today the diverse types of plastic wood glass aluminum low-grade-steel brass and copper are a good examples for such a versatile material classes.
Depending on which properties one wants to emulate of these materials differing amounts of design efforts are needed. Given enough design effort all relevant properties of the mentioned materials and more should be emulatable. Novel property combinations and entirely novel properties may emerge early on.
Replacement materials (structural metamaterials) would be
- easier in production
- easier to recycle and reshape
Novel property combinations
- e.g. glass behaving mechanically like a metal
Novel properties
- e.g. freely choosable stress strain diagrams
Simple materials
The earliest available materials will be the ones easiest to design. That is they will show the most easily achievable properties.
Simple interlocking (e.g. silicon carbide) microcomponents will be hard and brittle vaguely akin to bulk silicon carbide.
The simplest modifications to mend that behaviour are
- deliberate weakening of the interlocking mechanisms to make breakage a little less uncontrolled. This prevents the creation of splinters and thus make the microcomponents potentially recoverable.
- Addition of suspension into the interlocking mechanisms such that the material becomes quite strainable and seemingly elastic.
More advanced materials
When active components become involved one no longer has a structural but a quasi-structural metamaterial.
- Emulation of step dislocation plasticity on the microcomponent level. When the forced steps are memorized they could potentially be undone when the external load recedes.
[Todo: add more details]
