A metamaterial inspired by kirigami, the Japanese art of paper cutting, can support nearly 3000 times its own weight.
Metamaterials have structures not found in nature, which can give them unusual characteristics such as high strength under load.
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at the National University of Singapore and at the Swiss Federal Institute of聽Technology in Lausanne designed an interlocking kirigami pattern for聽paper that forms a thin shell of聽alternating squares. The shell can聽be bent into three-dimensional shapes using a computer model the聽pair created.
鈥淭he repeating chequerboard pattern allows us to distribute the聽load overall,鈥� says Paik. 鈥淭he distributed load you get for the very small thickness of this quasi-2D [surface] is remarkable.鈥�
Although a 5-centimetre cube made from the kirigami material weighs only around 12 grams, Zhang and Paik found it could support a force of 346 newtons 鈥� equivalent to a 35 kilogram weight, or about 2900 times heavier than the cube itself.
The pair鈥檚 model can calculate how to bend the 2D structure into various complex configurations. They hope it will be used by researchers in other fields where strong, lightweight structures are聽needed, such as aerospace engineering or medicine.
鈥淭he advantage of this type of metamaterial is that it can adapt to聽different shapes or adapt to different external surfaces or volumes,鈥� says at聽the University of Bristol, UK.
The kirigami is laborious to produce because the shell structures have to be folded by hand. For commercial uses, the process would聽probably have to be scaled up聽and automated, says Paik.
Advanced Functional Materials
