Order has long been the rule in the design of synthetic “metamaterials,” which have internal structures that give the whole material exceptional properties not found in nature.
When scientists engineer a metamaterial, they design from a single building block, or “unit cell,” that is then copied and pasted many times over. The result is a precise, periodic microstructure that results in improved material performance.
Now, a team from MIT and Northeastern University has found that engineering a little disorder into a material can further enhance its “meta” features.
In an open-access study appearing today in the journal Nature, the researchers introduce a new way to design metamaterials, inspired by the types of networks that appear in a leaf’s vasculature, the veins in a dragonfly’s wings, and the virtual connections in a social network. These new metamaterials — termed “scale-rich metamaterials” — exhibit structures of varying sizes, which sprawl and connect to form a physical network.
To read more, click here.