Additive manufacturing of metamaterial templates for IR tunable materials

我们建议开发一种多材料聚合物制造系统，用于介观结构聚合物/聚合物、聚合物/气体和聚合物金属复合材料的预成型，这些预成型可以被拉伸成具有微纳米级特征的纤维，以生产红外发射率可调的超材料。这些纤维在军事迷彩服中需求量很大，将作为防水布或军装的外表面，允许可变的热辐射率、吸收或散射特性，以提高战场上士兵和车辆的生存能力，在战场上，对手可以获得高光谱成像能力（热视觉）。该项目的具体成果是开发使用定制的增材制造挤出机系统生产预成型所需的全部制造能力，以及将多材料宏观预成型物转化为具有所需红外性能的超材料纤维的热拉伸能力。

We propose to develop a multi-material polymer manufacturing system for pre-forms of mesostructured polymer/polymer, Polymer/gas, and polymer metal composites that can be drawn down into fibres with micro and nanoscale features to produce infrared emissivity tunable metamaterials. These fibers are in high demand for military camouflage and would act as the outer surface of tarps or military uniforms to permit changeable thermal emissivity, absorption or scattering properties to enhance survivability of soldiers and vehicles on battlefields where adversaries have access to hyperspectral imaging capabilities (heat vision). The specific outcomes in this project are to develop the full manufacturing capabilities needed to produce the pre-forms using a customized additive manufacturing extruder system, and the thermal drawing capabilities to convert multi-material macroscale preforms into the metamaterial fibres with desired IR properties.