Dynamic morphological transformations in soft architected materials via buckling instability encoded heterogeneous magnetization

• Published in: Nature communications Vol. 13; no. 1; p. 7514
• Main Authors: Xia, Neng, Jin, Dongdong, Pan, Chengfeng, Zhang, Jiachen, Yang, Zhengxin, Su, Lin, Zhao, Jinsheng, Wang, Liu, Zhang, Li
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 06.12.2022; Nature Publishing Group; Nature Portfolio
• Subjects: 639/166; 639/301/923; Acoustic properties; Acoustics; Anisotropy; Biomedical materials; Buckling; Controllability; Dynamic stability; Elastomers; Electronic devices; Electronic equipment; Electronics; Genetic transformation; Humanities and Social Sciences; Instability; Magnetic fields; Magnetic properties; Magnetization; Metamaterials; Microfluidics; Morphology; multidisciplinary; Reconfiguration; Robotics; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Sensitivity enhancement; Stimulation; Thermal properties; Thermodynamic properties; Transformations
• ISSN: 2041-1723; 2041-1723
• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-35212-6

The geometric reconfigurations in three-dimensional morphable structures have a wide range of applications in flexible electronic devices and smart systems with unusual mechanical, acoustic, and thermal properties. However, achieving the highly controllable anisotropic transformation and dynamic regulation of architected materials crossing different scales remains challenging. Herein, we develop a magnetic regulation approach that provides an enabling technology to achieve the controllable transformation of morphable structures and unveil their dynamic modulation mechanism as well as potential applications. With buckling instability encoded heterogeneous magnetization profiles inside soft architected materials, spatially and temporally programmed magnetic inputs drive the formation of a variety of anisotropic morphological transformations and dynamic geometric reconfiguration. The introduction of magnetic stimulation could help to predetermine the buckling states of soft architected materials, and enable the formation of definite and controllable buckling states without prolonged magnetic stimulation input. The dynamic modulations can be exploited to build systems with switchable fluidic properties and are demonstrated to achieve capabilities of fluidic manipulation, selective particle trapping, sensitivity-enhanced biomedical analysis, and soft robotics. The work provides new insights to harness the programmable and dynamic morphological transformation of soft architected materials and promises benefits in microfluidics, programmable metamaterials, and biomedical applications. The dynamic transformation in soft architected materials often brings in unusual properties. Here, Zhang et al. present magneto-elastomers with 3D heterogeneous magnetization profiles encoded by buckling instability to achieve the dynamic regulation.