Mechanical metamaterial

Up: Metamaterials

Mechanical metamaterials are materials that emulate mechanical properties through structuring at smaller size-scales.
This is relative. Mechanical metamaterials can have their base structures at all scales.
E.g. Cainmaille is crude, textiles are fine. For base structures at the nanoscale see: Gemstone based metamaterial

Reversible assembly is highly desirable.
See: Digital control over matter

Non-mechanical metamaterials

The complement to mechanical metamaterials are the non-mechanical metamaterials. These include:

• Electromagnetic metamaterial with the subclasses of Optical metamaterials and crude Radio frequency metamaterials
• Thermal metamaterial
• Electrical metamaterials

Clear delineation to optical metamaterials

The term "Metamaterial" without prefix is often used to refer to optical metamaterials. This may be because:

• Many existing mechanical metamaterials already have a name and are not consciously recognized as such (see below)
• More advanced mechanical metamaterials are maybe experimentally less accessible than optical metamaterials (questionable ...)

Examples

Today

Known and existing cases of (passive) mechanical metamaterials are:

• Chainmaille
• Textiles
• many natural materials produced by living organisms (bones with structured voids, naca with layered protein and minerals, ...)
• .. there may be a few more that constitute whole different classes ??

Future

Future mechanical metamaterials based on gemstone like compounds (in particular based on base materials with high potential)

• gemstone based metamaterials

Many unusual properties are (will be) possible.
For more examples see: Metamaterial#Examples

Related

• Digital control over matter
• Metamaterial
• Gemstone based metamaterial
• Topological mechanical metamaterial
• Going off-topic: Tensegrity

External links

• Auxetics – one peculiar example of an nigh infinite amount of possibilities