Auxetic mechanical metamaterials

Abstract

The surge of interest in so-called “designer materials” during the last few years together with recent advances in additive manufacturing (3D printing) techniques that enable fabrication of materials with arbitrarily complex nano/micro-architecture have attracted increasing attention to the concept of mechanical metamaterials. Owing to their rationally designed nano/micro-architecture, mechanical metamaterials exhibit unusual properties at the macro-scale. These unusual mechanical properties could be exploited for the development of materials with advanced functionalities, with applications in soft robotics, biomedicine, soft electronics, acoustic cloaking, etc. Auxetic mechanical metamaterials are identified by a negative Poisson's ratio and are perhaps the most widely studied type of mechanical metamaterials. Similar to other types of mechanical metamaterials, the negative Poisson's ratio of auxetics is generally a direct consequence of the topology of their nano/micro-architecture. This paper therefore focuses on the topology–property relationship in three main classes of auxetic metamaterials, namely re-entrant, chiral, and rotating (semi-) rigid structures. While the deformation mechanisms in the above-mentioned types of structures and their relationship with the large-scale mechanical properties receive most attention, the emerging concepts in design of auxetics such as the use of instability in soft matter and origami-based structures are discussed as well. Furthermore, the data available in the literature regarding the elastic properties of auxetic mechanical metamaterials are systematically analyzed to identify the spread of Young's modulus–Poisson's ratio duos achieved in the auxetic materials developed to date.