A collaboration between the groups of Sid Nagel, Juan de Pabloand Heinrich Jaegerexplored opportunities for designing strain transmission in disordered, network-basedmeta-materials. These are based on the discovery, together with Andrea Liu (UPennMRSEC), thatin such networksbulk and shear moduli can be tailored independently by selectively removing bonds (“pruning”).
A novel pruning strategy was developed that can transform given amorphous networks with positive Poisson ratio v into deeply auxeticnetworks with v ≈ -1.
These concepts and strategies are applicable to 2D as well as 3D, and provide a new approach for creating materials that deform in a highly controlled, targeted manner.