Map the future of metamaterials

Metamaterials are artificially structured materials with exceptional properties that are not easily found in nature. Using micro- and nanoscale engineered 3D (3D) geometry, these architectural materials have emerged over the past decade as a promising method of engineering challenges where all other existing materials lack success, achieving unique mechanical and physical properties that exceed the capabilities of traditional materials.

Building materials exhibit unique mechanical and functional properties, but their potential remains at their full potential due to design, manufacturing and characterization challenges. Improvements and scalability in this area will help transform a wide range of industries, including biomedical implants, sports goods, automotive, aerospace, energy and electronics.

“Advances in scalable manufacturing, high-throughput testing, and AI-driven design optimization will revolutionize the field of mechanics and materials science, enabling smarter and adaptive materials that redefine engineering and everyday technology.”

In a perspective published in Nature Materials this month, mechanical engineering postdocs Portela and James Surjadi discuss important hurdles, opportunities and future applications in the field of mechanical metamaterials. The paper is titled “Enabling 3D Architectural Materials Over Length and Timescales.”

“The future in this field requires innovation in manufacturing these materials across length scales, from nano to macro, and understanding them on a variety of time scales, from slow deformation to dynamic impact,” Portela said, adding that interdisciplinary collaboration is also required.

A perspective is a peer-reviewed content type that the journal uses to invite consideration or discussion on matters that could be speculative, controversial, or highly technical, where the subject may not meet the criteria for review.

“Following the significant advancements over the past decade, it felt like our field was still facing two bottlenecks. The problem has expanded and we don’t have the knowledge or understanding of the properties under dynamic conditions,” Portela says.

The papers by Portela and Surjadi summarise cutting-edge approaches and highlight existing knowledge gaps in material design, manufacturing and characterization. We also propose a roadmap to accelerate the discovery of buildings with programmable properties to leverage emerging artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies for design and optimization, via a synergistic combination of high-throughput experiments and computational efforts.

“High-throughput miniaturized experiments, contactless characterization, and benchtop extreme conditional methods generate rich datasets for data-driven models, accelerating the optimization and discovery of metamaterials with unique properties,” says Surjadi.

Portela Lab’s motto is “Mechanisms and Materials built beyond scale.” This perspective aims to bridge the gap between basic research on next-generation building materials and real-world applications, presenting the visions the lab has been working on over the past four years.

This story has been republished courtesy of MIT News (web.mit.edu/newsoffice/), a popular site that covers news about MIT research, innovation and education.