CAREER: Mechanical Metamaterial Electronics: Theory, Design and Applications

机械超材料是一类人工工程材料，可以通过材料特性和几何形状之间的相互作用来提供新的和/或定制的行为。对机械超材料的研究将探索传统研究方法从未意识到的活性超材料的基本性质，可能导致新型电子材料系统的发明，这些系统自主运行，并在工程和医疗应用中服务于各种角色。具体地说，这个学院早期职业发展(Career)项目将建立一个机械超材料电子学(超机电学)的新领域。该领域结合了机械超材料、数字电子和纳米能量采集等工程领域。所产生的知识将为设计和发现自供电自主工程材料和未来的机械超材料计算机提供新的路线图。这一职业奖项将加速电子材料、结构力学、绿色能源收获和机器学习等交叉学科的本科生和研究生研究人员的教育。一项针对K-12学生的创新外展计划将激励他们在STEM追求职业生涯。在“训练师”模式下，ASCE多个学生分会的成员将接受培训，并与教育/发展工具包一起在全国范围内教育数千名初中生和高中生。该项目的总体目标是扩大我们对设计具有传感、摩擦电能收集、驱动和信息处理功能的有源电子机械超材料的科学的理解。这些材料系统将由设计合理的微/纳米结构组成，并带有内置的接触带电机制，以实现这些先进功能。将创建一个基于拓扑优化和机器学习的以计算数据为中心的框架，以探索多层和多材料电子机械超材料的新设计可能性。将开发数值和理论模型来描述所探索的机械超材料的机械和电学行为。将研究各种合理的摩擦电层设计、材料和表面优化方法以及附加制造工艺，以将电子机械超材料的功率输出提高到100-500微瓦的水平。有了这些功率输出水平，电子机械超材料可能被用于绿色能量收集，为低功率电子器件提供动力。这些材料系统在外界刺激下产生的电信号将被用来创建用于数字计算的自供电机电逻辑门。数字信息存储将通过将数据合并到自我恢复的单元单元图案中来演示。受超机电学启发的数字电路将被设计成执行基本计算(加法、减法、乘法和除法)。超机械电子学的现实应用将通过创造具有诊断功能的超材料矫形植入物来展示。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.