A team of engineers at the California Institute of Technology, working with colleagues from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Princeton University, has developed what they have named polycatenated architected materials (PAMs) that can be used as wireframe elements to create novel 3D structures with interesting properties.
In their paper published in Science, the group describes how they came up with the idea for creating the materials, some of their properties that have been discovered so far, and possible uses for them. Sameh Tawfick and Ignacio Arretche with the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have published a Perspective piece in the same journal issue outlining the work done by the team on this new effort.
As the use of 3D printing continues to mature, scientists continue to find new ways to use it to create not just interesting objects, but base materials to use in creating other objects. In this new study, the researchers have developed a new material that can be used to build new types of architectural constructs.
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