Materials Origami

July 7, 2017

New design principles for self-folding materials

From the ancient art of origami to modern meta-materials research, a central goal has been to develop the ability to convert a flat, stiff sheet into its final three-dimensional shape with just one single folding motion. Except for a few known casesgeneral design rules for the required patterns of creases have been elusive. 

Major progress towards this goal has now been achieved at the Chicago MRSEC by a team that included Arvind Murugan and Tom Witten together with joint postdoc Matthew Pinson and Puerto Rican REU student Alexandra Carruthers Ferrero. The team uncovered new statistical results in origamideveloped a novel classification of folding types, and identified pathways for achieving patterns whose energies are sufficiently low that they can be used to create self-folding structures.

This work opens up a wealth of new self-folding designs that are programmable.

New design principles for self-folding materials

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