NatWi - Viacheslav Slesarenko

Mechanical metamaterials: materials of the future?

Conventional materials that surround us in everyday life fulfill their functions. The concrete damn can withhold enormous water pressure, while the wool sweater helps us stay warm. But is it possible to go beyond conventional materials and design materials that will be adaptive, responsive, programmable, and intelligent? The mechanical metamaterials that rely on the sophisticated internal architecture to control their behavior provide one of the possible answers to this question. The rational architecture of the metamaterials makes it feasible to achieve extremely high properties and realize the functionalities impossible for their conventional counterparts. In this lecture, historical development and a current state of the art in the industry of metamaterials will be outlined. Moreover, the perspectives of this field from academic and industrial points of view will be briefly discussed.