In nature, materials such as ferroelastics and multiferroics can switch their microstructure in response to external stimuli, and this reconfiguration causes a simultaneous modulation of their material properties. Rapid prototyping technologies have enabled origami and kirigami-inspired architected materials to provide a means for designing shape-shifting structures, and here we show how multistable structures inspired by kirigami provide novel design criteria for preparing mechanical metamaterials with tunable properties. By changing the geometry of kirigami unit cells, we obtain multistable kirigami lattice structures endowed with a bistable snap-through mechanism. We demonstrate the precise control of material stiffness, along with the ability to tune this property in situ by locally and reversibly switching the unit cell configurations. We anticipate these mechanical metamaterials will provide a platform to achieve in situ tunable electrical, optical, and mechanical properties for a variety of applications in multifunctional materials, two-dimensional materials, and soft robotics.Materials with reconfigurable architecture may exhibit tunable electrical, optical, and mechanical properties. Notable examples are found in ferroelasticity[1] and multiferroics [2]. Applying an external stimulus, such as a stress/strain field, magnetic field, or electric field results in a structural or electronic phase transformation in the atomic scale which modulates the bulk material properties. Recent investigations on reconfigurable and programmable architected materials provide a new opportunity to attain tunable material properties by systematically programming the microstructure of a constituent material [3][4][5][6][7][8]. The mechanical properties of these architected materials depend on the topology and geometry of the substructure, and are typically independent of the constituent's chemical composition. By introducing controllable morphological structures into the unit cell, reprogrammable and reconfigurable metamaterials can be achieved. Among various types of architected materials, kirigami and origami inspired metamaterials attracted tremendous attention due to their robust and straightforward ability to transform 2D sheets into 3D structures [3,[7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20]31]. However, compared with origami-inspired metamaterials, which have been extensively studied [3,7,8,[17][18][19], understanding the behavior of kirigami structures is limited [9,11,13,[21][22][23]. Hence, there remains a significant opportunity to advance the design of kirigami-based metamaterials with tunable material properties.In this study, through a combination of experiments, finite element (FEA) simulations, and theoretical analyses, we demonstrate how a multistable microstructure inspired by kirigami provides a novel approach to designing mechanical metamaterials with tunable material properties. By changing the spacing between the adjacent slits in the conventional linear parallel cutting patterns, we obtain mul...
The ability to grab, hold, and manipulate objects is a vital and fundamental operation in biological and engineering systems. Here, we present a soft gripper using a simple material system that enables precise and rapid grasping, and can be miniaturized, modularized, and remotely actuated. This soft gripper is based on kirigami shells—thin, elastic shells patterned with an array of cuts. The kirigami cut pattern is determined by evaluating the shell’s mechanics and geometry, using a combination of experiments, finite element simulations, and theoretical modeling, which enables the gripper design to be both scalable and material independent. We demonstrate that the kirigami shell gripper can be readily integrated with an existing robotic platform or remotely actuated using a magnetic field. The kirigami cut pattern results in a simple unit cell that can be connected together in series, and again in parallel, to create kirigami gripper arrays capable of simultaneously grasping multiple delicate and slippery objects. These soft and lightweight grippers will have applications in robotics, haptics, and biomedical device design.
While engineering structures are traditionally designed to be stiff and stable, shape-shifting structures often utilize compliance and instability to change shape. Inspired by origami and kirigami, folding and cutting sheets provide a programmable way to rethink our approach to engineering design. Combining these geometric ideas with advanced materials can enable self-folding structures that function as shape-shifting devices.
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