CAREER: Mechanical Metamaterial Electronics: Theory, Design and Applications

University Of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh PA

Investigators

Abstract

Mechanical metamaterials are a class of artificially engineered materials that can offer new and/or customized behaviors through the interplay between material properties and geometry. This research into mechanical metamaterials will explore fundamental properties of active metamaterials never realized before by traditional research methods, potentially leading to the invention of novel electronic material systems that operate autonomously and serve various roles in engineering and medical applications. Specifically, this Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) project will establish a new field of mechanical metamaterial electronics (meta-mechanotronics). This field couples the engineering domains of mechanical metamaterials, digital electronics, and nano energy harvesting. The generated knowledge will provide new road maps for design and discovery of self-powered autonomous engineered materials and future mechanical metamaterial computers. This CAREER award will accelerate the education of undergraduate and graduate researchers at the intersection of electronic materials, structural mechanics, green energy harvesting, and machine learning. An innovative outreach program is planned for K-12 students that will inspire them to pursue careers in STEM. Under the “train-the-trainer” model, members of multiple ASCE Student Chapters will be trained and deployed with educational/development kits to educate thousands of middle and high school students nationally. The overarching goal of this project is to broaden our understanding of the science of designing active electronic mechanical metamaterials with sensing, triboelectric energy harvesting, actuation, and information processing functionalities. These material systems will be composed of rationally designed micro/nano structures with built-in contact-electrification mechanisms to realize such advanced functionalities. A computational data-centric framework based on topology optimization and machine learning will be created to explore new design possibilities for multi-layered and multi-material electronic mechanical metamaterials. Numerical and theoretical models will be developed to characterize the mechanical and electrical behavior of the explored mechanical metamaterials. Various rational designs for the triboelectric layers, material and surface optimization methods, and additive manufacturing processes will be investigated to increase the power output of the electronic mechanical metamaterials to levels on the order of 100-500 µW. With these power output levels, electronic mechanical metamaterials can potentially be used for green energy harvesting to power low-power electronic devices. The electrical signals generated by these materials systems under external stimuli will be used to create self-powered mechanoelectrical-logic gates for digital computation. Digital information storage will be demonstrated by incorporating the data into the self-recovering unit cell patterns. Meta-mechanotronics-inspired digital circuits will be designed to perform basic computations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division). The real‐life applications of meta-mechanotronics will be demonstrated by creating metamaterial orthopedic implants with diagnostic functionality. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.