Constructing solids from nanoscale building blocks
for a future generation of materials.
The Nanoarchitected Metamaterials Laboratory is part of the Institute of Nanotechnology and a member of the Cluster of Excellence 3D Matter Made to Order at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany. Our research focuses on nanoarchitected metamaterials and additive manufacturing approaches of such, to develop novel multifunctional high-performance materials. In this, we study methods to simultaneously harness beneficial materials size effects, as well as topological characteristics of cellular and composite architectures. Examples include tensegrity metamaterials, which circumvent failure via delocalized deformation mechanism, 3D-printable polymer-derived ductile nanoceramics, which can be strained up to 25%, and nanolattices constructed from closed-cell plate-architectures whose specific strengths surpasses that of bulk diamond while consisting of >50% air.
