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
Contents
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 for (mechanical) metamaterials: past, present, future
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)
Many unusual properties are (will be) possible.
For more examples see: Metamaterial#Examples
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
- ... many more
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
